HOMEWORLD: The Sword of Caaliburnous (She-Ra/Homeworld crossover)

"So," Ajora started, with no idea what to say. Bow and Glimtara looked at her. She froze, then blundered forward. "Uh...my roommate is related to the intelligence agent that interviewed me! Do they let many family units serve on the ship?"

Silence.

Glimtara frowned at her. "Yes."

Ajora flinched at the tone of her voice. Bow, though, put his hand on her shoulder, smiling slightly. "Hey, she's not even from Kharak."

Glimtara scowled. "True, do you even have a Kiith?"

"...is that..." Ajora hesitated. "Is that...the patch?" She pointed at her shoulder, where the space for her patch was left empty and bare. "Should I have something in that?"

Glimtara put her hands over her face - her shoulders shaking. Ajora tensed to pick up her food and evacuated - but then Glimtara drew her hands down and she realized that she was laughing. "Should I...yes! Yes, you should put something there!" She laughed, then laid her head on the table. "Oh my god, I finally meet someone who won't care about my kiith-sa and it's an alien."

"Hey!" Bow says.

"You're Sobani, it doesn't count," Glimtara said, grinning at him.

"Okay, what is a Kiith?" Ajora asked, biting her lip. "Is it like...a family?"

"They're the family to your family," Glimtara said, sighing and resting her cheek on her palm. "Everyone in a Kiith is related by ties of blood and alliance - your Kiith elders and your Kiith brothers and sisters are supposed to have your back for your whole life, and you have theirs too. I'm Naabal. Bow's Sobani." She gestured between the two of them.

"Naabal's the biggest Kiith," Bow said, causing Glimtara to scowl at him.

"How big?" Ajora asked, fascinated.

Both of them looked withdrawn for a moment. Glimtara sighed. "There are about...thirty two thousand nine hundred and eleven." She looked away.

About.

Right.

Ajora looked down at her food. How many times had Glimtara looked at that number. That precise number. She could easily imagine how hard it'd be to be precise, back before their world had burned. How many Nabaal had...switched to other Kiith, or married out of it, or...just died or been born before anyone could adjust the figures. Census data. It got easier with smaller pools. Much smaller.

"Do you have anything like that in the Empire?" Bow asked, quietly.

"We have families, yeah," Ajora said, sighing softly. "Well. Nobles have them. Your name is your life - your honor, and your land."

"What does land have to do with it?" Glimtara asked, her brow furrowing.

"Well, every noble family is bequeathed a certain amount of land - land's wealth, even in space. Lots of the new baronies and counties are established in asteroidal bases, so they can own the resources and null-G workshops there," Ajora said, babbling a little to keep the conversation from slipping into an awkward silence again. "Those are mostly families in the book of silver and copper, if you're in the book of gold, you have land bequeathed on actual planetary surfaces, and if you're in the book of stars, then your family owns land on the homeworld."

Glimtara shook her head. "What an stupid system!" she said, angrily. "If you're not there for people, why are you even here at all?"

Ajora blinked at her. "W-Well, commoners have...guilds, I guess." She blushed. "I don't know much about how they live. I was mostly focused on...becoming a pilot..." She looked down at her plate. Her childhood dreams, growing up with Kaja, of flying far away from the confines of Hiigara and her mother and the court and the whispered conversations and knife-edged secrets that she hadn't even fully understood at the time. Ajora started to tuck the food away. Her eyes widened.

"Hhshgh izh ghhud!"

"Aren't you a princess?" Glimtara asked, then grinned. "Didn't they teach you to not talk with your mouth full?"

Ajora wasn't sure how to process how relieved she was when, after she had asked where fighter ops was, Glimtara and Bow had told her: Oh, that's where we're heading.

"You're both pilots too?" Ajora asked as they walked together through the decks of the ship. They managed to not get too many glances and scowls, which Ajora thanked god for.

"Yeah," Glimtara said. "We were tapped for the boarding action because...well, the actual number of close combat specialists we have on this ship is limited. We kind of launched with enough security folks to keep a crew of fifty thousand people safe - not to handle full scale assaults on captured alien frigates."

Ajora nodded. "Well, boarding actions like that are pretty rare for a reason. Too hard to cut through hulls when enemy strike craft are out there, and if an enemy fleet loses their strike craft coverage, they're either going to be scrapped or they're going to run - you have to knock out the hyperdrive, then get them to surrender. And if they don't, well...sending troops in..." She shook her head slightly.

"Oh, no, it's a lot easier than that," Glimtara said.

"Yeah, we have salvage corvettes," Bow said.

Ajora blinked. Taiidani had salvage ships, of course. But she had no idea what they had to do with boarding actions. At her look, Bow grinned. "Three of them can lock in and drag a frigate to the engineering bay. Then you can immobilize it with the construction tools and send in troops from every direction you want."

Ajora opened her mouth, the mental image forming in juddering, disbeliving chunks.

They reached Flight Ops 2 and Bow and Glimtara headed in, as if they had just said the most normal thing in the world. As if they hadn't just said that the Kushan capture strategy was for corvettes to maglock onto an enemy ship - an enemy ship that was still shooting at them and then drag it back to the hanger bay of their carrier, then cut into it and send people inside. Armed with...with...she stepped inside the ops chamber and started to count the number of knives in sheathes...

One, two, three...four, five, six... Ajora counted as she stepped to the chair next to Glimtara. The ops room was arrayed like a lecture hall, with several rows of chairs, all facing a screen projector that was designed to show anything the flight commander wanted to. The flight commander was another Sobani (i wonder how he's related to Bow...) who nodded as the last of the pilots came in. "Welcome," he said. "We have completed our first jump since Kharak and have arrived at a resource rich region of space. The fleet is currently beginning mining operations - we have Alpha and Beta squad running escort on the resourcers. You will be running through live fighter drills on the new batch of interceptors. The engineers say the Blade is a serious step up in firepower from the Arrow, but has unique handling characteristics compared to the light interceptor that we want you to have nailed down before we run into any hot action. We have several pilots fresh from the simulators and one...external recruit."

His eyes flicked to Ajora. A very dusky skinned Sobani girl in the front row craned her head back, then did a quick double take, seeing Ajora. "You have to be kidding, sir," she said, breaking into the attentive silence of the crowd. Soft murmurs came from others as they took in Ajora's blond hair and...other ethnographic features.

"Fleet Intelligence has vetted her," the flight commander said, frowning. "She was thrown in a brig for refusing to obey the order to burn Kharak - and now she wants to kill the bastards who did it. Sounds to me, she's on our side." He glared fiercely at everyone else, and that did seem to settle most of the crowd. The Sobani in the front row didn't look convinced.

"Now, for your training..." the flight commander began to lay out a similar training flight/proving ground that Ajora had flown blindfolded back in the Imperial navy. She took mental notes closely, her brow furrowing. She was going to prove that she belonged here. That they needed her. That she could do some good.

Once the meeting broke, Ajora stood up with Glimtara, who looked annoyed. "Great, more training," she said, grumping softly. "We didn't get to fly at all. Or fight. They only sent us in once the frigate was practically empty."

"Oh? Why?" Ajora asked.

Glimtara blushed. "I...my mom." She shook her head. "She's protective."

Bow made subtle head shaking gestures. Ajora, who knew a lot about moms you'd rather not, nodded.

---
We're about to hit our first actual combat mission, swear to god! We just have one last gameplay feature to decide on! ...vibes! in the HEAT system, you have relationships with your fellow characters - these can change whenever you want! Relationships give mechanical abilities to you - and since you, Bow and Glimmer are going to be hitting space and actually using guns soon, we should have those nailed down!

How does Ajora feel about Bow?
[ ] Butterflies: You feel butterflies in your stomach when his mandibles spread in a smile.
[ ] Friendship: You know this guy is the fucking best. Besties!
[ ] Flustered: You cannot stop thinking about her encounter suit.
[ ] Rival: You will hit more bottles next time at the range.

How does Ajora feel about Glimtara?
[ ] Butterflies: You feel butterflies in your stomach when his mandibles spread in a smile.
[ ] Friendship: You know this guy is the fucking best. Besties!
[ ] Flustered: You cannot stop thinking about her encounter suit.
[ ] Rival: You will hit more bottles next time at the range.

(we already know how she feels about Kaja. Fun fact, Friendship + Butterflies = Longing!

Longing: One of you doesn't know the other is falling for them.
Effect: The PC who is longing gets +2 to a skill they think will impress their partner. The friend gets the effect of 'Besties.'

Kaja gets +2 when she's trying to show up Ajora, true story!

YES MY RPG HAS MECHANICAL REPRESENTATION FOR LOVE TRIANGLES AND TSUNDERE, I'M ALLOWED THIS, IT'S LEGAL, SHUT UP!)

The three of them walked to the adjoining flight prep room. It was a combination locker room and armory, with narrow steel doors, each one marked with a pilot's sigil using the most remarkably simple method that Ajora had ever seen - they actually used a kind of erasable ink thing. She only knew it was that because she watched someone actually scribble something on a locker, which Bow pointed out. "That's your name," he said.

"I need to learn your language," Ajora said.

"Which one?" Glimtara asked, laughing as she stepped to her locker. She turned her back to Ajora, reaching behind herself. Ajora's eyes widened as she realized that the other woman was beginning to unzip her in-ship uniform for whatever they wore in actual combat situations. Before Bow had even left the locker? Ajora swung her head back around and saw Bow was unbuttoning his top. Ajora froze and the cultural difference hit her like a brick to the forehead. She stood completely still as Glimtara continued. "There's Trajes, which was spoken on the south pole. Then we have Be-Atun, from the equatorial tribes, and Old Khain, from the Heresy Wars." Her eyes were somewhere between playful and fierce as she turned to face Ajora, who had a hard time keeping her eyes on Glimtara's eyes - the woman was shorter and...

And...

Curiver.

Than Ajora.

And Ajora felt uncomfortably aware of that.

"Most of our text is Tiirn," Glimtara explained. Then, cocking her head. "Ajora, you look like you're about to faint."

"Yeah, come on, we need to switch to skinsuits," Bow said.

Ajora made the mistake of looking. His abs were entirely on display - every single one, taut and toned. His muscles had a pair of curious, almost ritual looking scars - half moons on his chest, pale markers against his dark skin. Ajora felt like she was going to drown in fire and flood, and she was still standing there, dressed, entirely dress. Glimtara, careless in her near nudity, snapped her fingers beneath Ajora's nose, causing her to start.

"Hey, Ajora, what's wrong?"

The sudden, intense, vivid mental image of Kaja walking in then, taking advantage of the Kushan's clear laxity when it came to matters of decency...the picture of her in Ajora's mind was shockingly sharp. And vivid. Heterochrome eyes glittering, in that smug, playful face, breasts bared, hips cocked, grin welcoming...

Hey Ajora...

Ajora shook her head so hard that she felt her brains rattling around in there. "Nothing! I just...I'm...used to more privacy!"

"In a locker room?" Glimtara asked, her brow furrowing - her thumbs hooking on her leggings. She wriggled out, shimming from side to side.

"To be fair, she is a princess," Bow said as, behind Ajora, his pants hit the ground too.

"They didn't give you a private chambers for dressing in a space suit did they?" Glimtara asked, disbeliving. She turned to open her locker - and Ajora saw that her back had curved wing tattoos - similar to the logo she had seen etched in various ceremonial spots on the ship. Wings, fanning out to either side of a circular tattoo, right on the small of her back, above her...

"You know you have to change, right?" Bow said, sympathetically. "If you want, I can close my eyes."

"What?" Ajora shook her head. "No!" She looked forward, glared at her locker. "I'm not a spoiled princess. I can...I got this just fine." She slid her jacket off, rolling her shoulders - her forearms and her biceps flexing as she stretched her arms, trying to loosen up and relax and get out of the panicking oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit that was rolling around in her brain again and again and again. She was so focused on the locker, on the mechanical motion of clasps undoing and zippers slithering open, on thinking of anything but the two others next to her, that she didn't notice Glimtara's covert glance.

Glimtara saw a lot.

She saw a lot to like. Belly muscles that could crack a shatu nut, were one. Skin so pale it was utterly enthrallingly exotic - if you could get past the fact it made the alien look like she was sickly and going to drop dead at any second. There was that. Not to mention the shocking golden hair - mirrored right where one would expect, but there, another alien custom: the Kushan kept themselves as hairless as they could manage other than their scalps (and even that was something a lot of older people, of Glimtara's father's generation, didn't bother with, sticking with shaves and wigs.)

Well. Ajora had...

A lot more hair that was bright, bright gold than Glimtara expected.

But the thing that kept her eyes on the other woman far longer than needed was the furrowed scar - right there, above her right breast. It was narrow and looked as if it had been tended to with great skill, but it remained deep and pink-red.

Glimtara jerked her eyes away, her cheeks burning.

She liked scars.

Ajora settled in her cockpit, grinning as she looked through the forward view at the array of practice drones. She pulled back on the trigger and one of the drones bust into a million pieces - shattering apart with a spray of fragments and a flare of orange white light. Her hand jerked on the throttle and the Blade she sat in trembled as it accelerated. She cut acceleration, flipped around, then sprayed the second of the practice drones with a devastating barrage of kinetic rounds, tearing the hull of the target into pieces and sending the scraps flying away. As she watched the pieces whip away, she heard a soft whistle. "Blade Four, you fly like you've been handling fighters your whole life."

Ajora bit back a huge smile. She tried to sound just...normal. Humble, even. "Thanks, FlightCom."

"Show off," Glimtara's voice cracked in her ear, playfully.

"Lets see how you handle formation flying. Form up with Blade 3 and 5 and we'll begin with a simple delta while resourcing collects the scrap."

Glimtara and Bow's fighters both swept in - flanking on either side of Ajora's. Ajora waggled the blunt, almost rectangular chisel shape of her fighter. She had to admit...when she had first seen the Blade, she had been unimpressed. Yes, the armor was thicker - in the front and flanks - and the main weapon was lined up with the center of mass, but the Blade lacked the sleek wings and areodynamics of the Triikdor. It'd maybe be able to fly in the atmosphere...like...well, like a brick. But in the void of space, it had enough RCS thrusters and kick to the fusion reactor to manage.

Maybe more than manage.

"Good trim, Blade Four, good trim."

Ajora smiled. Glimtara's voice was smug. "It does help that-"

Whatever she had been about to say cut off in a sudden flare of white. Ajora blinked - and then recognized the line of searing white she saw cut in the heavens. Her hand went to her helmet. "Fleet Command-"

"Hyperspace waveform detected," the computerized voice she had heard several times now - Fleet Command's...adjutant intelligence? She wasn't sure. Ajora watched as the blue white rectangle swept along space and seemed to sculpt into three dimensional space the long, narrow shape of-

"Assassin!" Ajora shouted.

"What the hell is that!?" Glimtara asked.

The Assassin was a capital ship killer - a frigate, who's entire frame was built around a massive ion cannon. The Turani pirates augmented the range and power on their Taiidani issue ion cannon emitters by building curved, blade-like magnetic focusing lenses that swept to each side of the Assassin like solar collector. They weren't, though. They would turn the main beam into a blazing, incandescent sword that could slice a capital ship in half, given time and effort. But worse than that, the Assassin...wasn't alone.

The Turani were always kind of crazy. Ajora had heard that often enough.

Now she saw it.

Almost a dozen Bandit class interceptors were literally bolted to the central frame of the Assassin. Silently, those bolts blew...and the Bandits screamed away from the frigate - tumbling and spitting fire and death as they came rushing straight for them. Ajora's entire world focused into this one moment.

---
COMBAT START!

You can pick any one active power and any one 'end turn' power. I'll be providing defaults, but if you feel like flexing some system mastery, you can write in!

POWER CHOICE
[ ] Default - Ajora the Dogfighter. Active power: Turn the Tables (this allows Ajora to take oompsh on her vehicle and place them on enemies by reversing her situation) End Turn Power: Hold Together Girl! (gain Jerry Rig oomph, allowing damaged systems to function normally for 1 turn per oomph.)
[ ] Write In

CURRENT SITUATION
There are 10 Tuani fighters and 1 Ion Array Frigate. Thanks to them ambushing you, their "arrival" phase allowed to act. The fighters had no weapons in range and no tactics to use - so, they skipped straight to their movement phase (NPCs have to move, then act - PCs are under no such compunction.) They move to surround!

The frigate is a Captain NPC. They use their tactic that gives all Danger 1> NPCs an action! The Bandits cooperate to apply three "Weak Spot" Oomph on Bow, three on Glimtara, and four on Ajora! These will render your armor non-effective until they are removed.

Now, Ajora gets to act! Note, my pre-made plans depend on the Default power set!

0/6 HEAT
[ ] Ajora will attack! Diff 1 versus her vehicular weapons skill of 2 (base 2, +1 for adds, -1 for enemy evasion) for a hit +1 oomph. Base Damage is 7 versus enemy armor of 3 (10-7 from armor piercing rounds.) Hit + 1 Oomph does 8 damage. Take 1 bonus heat to bump that to 12 damage, which (when applied to the hull of the enemy) destroys them. Vent 1 heat to use Turn the Table, moving all 4 Weak Point oomphs to the Ion Array frigate (1 moved at 4 Vent, +3 for 3 vent reduction)
[ ] Ajora will defend! Diff 1 versus her tactics skill of 2 (Base 2, no modifiers.) Success+1 Oomph removes 2 Weak Spot Oomphs. The next action is diff 2, removing 1 Tactic (Diff 2 versus a TV of 2), and 1 heat will bump her TV up enough to remove the last 2 weak spots. (1/6 heat.) Then she will use her vehicular weapon skill to remove weak point Oomphs from Glimtara. Diff 3 (third action) versus her TV of 3 (2+1) removes 1 Oomph, Ajora takes 2 more heat (3/6) to remove all three in one action.) Ajora takes her foruth action - requiring 3 more heat (6/6) to remove 3 weak point oomphs from Bow. She uses Hold Together to create 1 Jerry Rig oomph (not very useful), venting her heat down to 0/6.
[ ] Write In