When Thane awoke, back sore from the previous night's escapades, he didn't find Ivy in his arms where he distinctly remembered her being when he fell asleep. He jolted up, wincing as he did. Every muscle fiber in his body groaned in contempt. If the recovery process wasn't what he had been feeling before, this was it now.

He managed to sit on the edge of the bed, rubbing his temples in small tight circles before rising to his feet to grab a towel. He slipped into a robe, throwing the towel over his shoulder as he scanned the room for any signs of her. Her clothing was gone, but something felt strange. He doubted she would suddenly leave, let alone without waking him up in the process.

After his shower he put on a black high collared synthetic leather jacket, similar to the ones he used to wear, but this one had elaborate red trimming, seemingly of Elchor design, with pants to match. He kept his same boots, there would be no need to run in shoes that were chaffing his feet due to being new. That being said, each step felt like he had run quite a few miles too many the previous day. He needed pain relievers, but he wouldn't want the drugs to cloud his judgement in case of emergency.

"Thane, the Miss is… quite busy at the moment in the cockpit." He could hear Ra say from behind him, and spun around on the heels of his boots to face him. Ra looked worried, the way his mandibles were clenched slightly tighter to his jawline than usual. How he was trying to avoid Thane's gaze, "She's with Kyre, she won't let me in even to bring them water. Whatever it is, it's important. I think something with Omega, I managed to hear that much… I know she doesn't like me to know things so I don't worry… But i worry more when I'm left in the dark…" He sighed, shaking his head, "I'm sure those two will be able to fix whatever it is… but…"

Thane walked up and put a gentle hand on the Turian's shoulder, "You worry about the ship, I'll worry about it's crew. Okay?" Ra was usually quite giddy, it bothered Thane to see him this way, "If there's something wrong in Omega, I have contacts who could figure out what it is."

Ra lowered his head, looking to his feet, "I want to help too... "

"Ra… They need you here, where there is no fighting. They need you to always be someone they can come back to when they need it most."

"What if… What if one day they don't come back." He looked up to Thane, tears swelling in his eyes, "What if someone takes them from me, what do I do then!"

"Then you honour them for the work they will have done for this galaxy. You make sure they are not forgotten, because you're right. They'll eventually leave, all people do, but it's the memories of them that stay here in this world that tell us who they really were." He looked the Turian over, his suit had pieces of dust trapped in its joints. He'd been cleaning the air vents, perhaps that was how he'd heard the little he had, "Alright?"

He rubbed the tears out of his eyes before they could fall down his face, "I promise."

"Good, stay strong. Have you heard of Garrus Vakarian?"

"Of course sir, there isn't a Turian alive who hasn't heard of Vakarian." His eyes sparkled at the mention of his hero's name. He'd seen him briefly, but he didn't get time to recognise who he was back on Erroz. "He's what every Turian wants to be!"

"You'll be like him one day." Thane smiled, patting on the shoulder again to take the elevator down to the cockpit, leaning on the elevator wall as the doors shut, and Ra ran off to find Emma, who was cleaning the windows, humming to herself, eager to see more of the stars.

Thane ignored his stomach growling as he approached the cockpit's doors, knowing firmly on it. He heard Ivy and Kyre suddenly quiet themselves before Kyre cleared his throat, "Ra, we don't need any water, we have a cooler in here."

"It's Thane." He said, and suddenly the door wheezed open and Ivy stared at him, hands on her hips.

"You should be resting." She pulled him in and shut the doors again, "But knowing you that was far too much to hope." She looked back to an orange holographic table between herself and Kyre. The orange didn't match the rest of the display panels in the room, or any of the display panels that Thane had seen aboard the firebird. All of the ones he had observed were different shades of blue, the ones in the cockpit were a hue of brilliant cerulean, and aboard the rest of the ship shone a deep shade of Asari Blue. Her fingers floated delicately over it, as which deciding which of the incoherent shapes was the most important. "I don't understand… Kyre."

"I don't get it either… but we have to keep trying…" He stared at it as if his head would pop, not even blinking.

"Fill in Thane, I'm thinking." She walked around the panel as if seeing it from a different angle would help, but instead her brow became more furrowed as she circled it, perplexed by the puzzle before her.

"Thane. Phoenix's contact on Omega sent us this, it's heavily encrypted, and our computers can't cipher it. It's meant for a manual decryption, but we can't seem to crack it." He leaned his head into his hands, eyes fixed on the pattern before him. "Maybe it's a maze, you know the ones you play as children?"

"I tried that, remember? The more I look at it, the less it makes sense!" She bit her lip, mind racing for an answer, "I don't understand. What if they're just messing with us."

"They wouldn't send a genius something only a genius could solve unless it was meant only for that genius, there would be no point to encrypting it manually, they could use fake computer jargon that wouldn't analyse properly." Thane stepped over to get a better look, the puzzle before him making no sense at all. "Have you asked Ra?"

Kyre shook his head, "We don't like to get Ra involved in these things, the less he has to worry about the better." He narrowed his eyes, moving some of the shapes around, but when it yielded no result, he moved them back. "We've tried everything."

"You should let him help." He looked to Ivy, who was far too focused on the puzzle before her to hear anything that he was saying. She looked so completely trapped in it, like her mind wouldn't let her consider anything else until she had completed the task before her, "Ivy."

"Thane, he's a kid. He may be an adult because of his age, but I'm not putting him in any risk until he's completely ready to defend himself if there are repercussions. I don't even like him leaving the ship to be quite honest." She closed her eyes, but remained in her position, when she opened her eyes she would resume with her work, but it almost looked like she was trying to burn the pattern of the puzzle into her memory. "He's had enough taken from him, I don't want to take away his freedom as well. The moment he becomes an active Firebird agent, the moment he works for Phoenix too. They'll own him like they own Kyre and me, and as much as I enjoy working under Phoenix, I despise working under people. We're training him here so that he can go and help the Galaxy when he is ready, and right now-"

"Ivy, give him a chance. He's ready, he wants to help. I can't help you with this, and you're stuck. Kyre said it himself, Ra is brilliant. And a fresh pair of genius eyes is what you need for this…" His eyes looked to the glowing orange holographic table, "Mess."

Ivy sighed, head hanging in defeat, "Perhaps we have been sheltering him a bit too much… He is an adult now…"

Kyre snapped up, looking at her, completely startled, worry and fear embedded in his eyes, "Ivy you can't be serious…"

"It's a matter of time before he grows to think himself completely useless, or that we hate him." She shook her head, looking up to the Lystheni, "We have to, especially if we want to figure this out before we get to Omega."

"He doesn't even know… What if he goes out there and finds out?"

"...Then he'll hate us, or forgive us. That's not a problem right now." She sighed and opened the door with a single touch of a button, set to read her fingerprints, "Ra!"

The boy was up there in an instant, as if he had been waiting to be summoned. Which in truth, he had, along with a tall glass of water, "I brought you water, finally need it?" He smiled, setting it down on the countertop behind Ivy, surprisingly not spilling a drop, "I also have lemons, I know you like to put those in your water, and Kyre for some odd reason puts sugar in it sometimes, which is gross, but I brought some sugar anyway, I also just started making some biscuits-"

Ivy shook her head, now unsure of her decision, "Then go turn the oven off, we need you for something else-"

"Cookies? Something to clean up? Mechanical malfunction?" He looked around for any sign of a problem, not seeing any, ignoring the orange glow in between his pseudo-parents, " I don't understand, nothing seems to be amiss."

"We… I… Need help with a puzzle." She sighed, blushing in shame. She, Ivy Koi, needed help with a matter of intellect? it was completely absurd.

"Miss, you don't need my help for a puzzle." He smiled brightly, pouring her a glass of water, "Perhaps you're simply tired, and don't have a clear head." He passed her the glass, looking at her face when she didn't take it from him, and he set it back down, "You also look flushed, are you sick? What's your temperature? Do humans even get fevers when they get sick?" Ra put his gloved hand, which was quite dirty and covered in dust, to Ivy's forehead, the dust causing her to sneeze, "You are sick!"

"No you Nimrod, just look at this damn puzzle for me!" She yelled, pointing at it, "I can't do it and I-!" She took a shaky deep breath, her chest quivering as it fell from anger, in a desperate attempt to calm herself down. "Help me."

Ra looked to the orange glow before them, and laughed, "You know, you don't need to go to such extremes to make me feel like I'm helping, especially with a ploy as obvious as this." He put his hands over the table, tracing and rearranging some of the lines, smiling, "This is a game I used to play as a kid, I think humans call it Cat's Cradle."

Ivy looked between the Turian and the board, "That's not Cat's Cradle, and that is certainly not a children's game!" She watched Ra's hands rearrange the lines, she had been doing it wrong all along. She was focusing on the shapes left by the lines themselves, instead of the actual objective, "You have got to be kidding me." She watched his fingers move deftly over the hologram, rearranging the lines so that none crossed in the middle, and the rest traced the hexagon in which they were trapped in. "You didn't recognise it because of the six points most likely, but we Turians only have six fingers, so… I can tell you designed this for me to feel important, but it's not necessary… Really."

Ivy leaned over the now completed encryption, tucking her hair behind her ears. Thane now noticed that it was still down from last night, "It was so obvious, and I overlooked it this whole time…" She paused, shaking her head in denial, "I'm an idiot."

"You mean… This was real?" Ra pointed to it, baffled by the tone in her voice, something he had never heard from her before and that he couldn't really identify. "You couldn't solve this?"

"I couldn't solve that." She closed her eyes, "Now Kyre and I-" She looked at Ra, packing up the tray, leaving the water there for them, "Where are you going?" She watched him quizzically, it looked to her as if he were leaving.

"Well I know you and Kyre like to do these things on your own-"

Kyre interrupted, making eye contact with Thane just before he spoke,"You're old enough now, there's no need for any more secrets." He still looked terribly uncomfortable with it. He didn't want to see Ra grow up, he didn't want to see him put in danger. "You solved a problem neither of us could, that proves you're an asset to the team and that you should be working with us."

Ra set the tray down, eyes wide in shock, "You really think… Will Phoenix accept me? What if they don't want me?"

"Believe me, they'll want you, Ra, So why don't you do the honours of opening up that message?" Ivy stepped over to Ra, putting a hand on his shoulder as Kyre sat down in the pilot's chair, an unusual sight, ready to take off depending on the contents of the message. Usually a heavily encrypted message was not a good sign, it mean that there were possible leaks in a group's security systems.

"Alright." Ra stepped over to the hologram, shaking slightly in excitement. He took a deep breath as he tapped the now glowing blue dot in the centre of the cradle that he had untangled. "To Turians, cradles often mean traps according to our folklore."

A code designed for a Turian to solve. A puzzle related to their folklore.

"Attention crew of the Firebird, due to your recent activities on Erroz, your crew is no longer recognised as members of the Phoenix organization." Ivy froze in complete terror, covering her mouth and growing pale. "Your ship will be confiscated at the next hub world you dock at." Kyre stared at the hologram completely stunned, unable to process what he was hearing, "And you will be sent back to the Citadel for a hearing as well as the official revocation of your Phoenix privileges." Ra looked at his mentors confused, wondering what was happening, "We thank you for your service however in light of recent actions your positions will be terminated. Please pack your belongings as The Firebird will now autopilot to the nearest hub world, Omega. In the event that you attempt to override the systems, or there is a mechanical malfunction, you will be tracked by our Loss Prevention Team and terminated forcefully, and you will receive no trial to explain your actions and your ship will be tossed into the nearest star. Have a wonderful day."