The year is 2123, as man desperately struggles out into space with its first terra-forming and colonization efforts of Mars and several long-term plans for FTL travel to other systems for the construction of the first hyper gates, there was one thing they never really counted on. A more advanced species, calling themselves the Ixarren, found its way to Earth and the first space war against the Ixarren began.

That was ten years ago. Both sides lost considerable forces, but perhaps humanity lost much more.. They barely clung to what they had, but the war wouldn't end yet, as the last battleship was destroyed, the commander of the vessel transmitted a final message. That there were many more Ixarren and that their forces were even greater in number than those that had been committed to the war with the humans.

They would be back.. And if things really were as they said, they would be hard pressed ot stop assaults on the ground. They needed new weapons. New ships. They cannibalized Ixarren technology, reverse engineered it and brought forth new weapons. The greater cities were defended with new shielding technology, but this couldn't stop a ground force entirely.

Then came the Guardians. Advanced combat suits, linked with cyber communicatoon to Operators, the main controllers, but such valuable, skilled individuals could not be used as pilots. So came the third part of a Guardian unit. Pilots. Not like those whom would fly jetfighters or space combat vehicles. No These pilots were fitted with cybernetic minds of their own, committed to combat simulations until they were paired with an Operator.

And they proved quite effective when the Ixarren finally returned. The first waves of ground troops were pushed pack, infiltrators in the city were dealt with. But the war wouldn't be over yet. And as the greater battles in space were waged, the Guardian units would defend the cities.
One such operator, a man named Cadr, would finally receive an invitation to the Guardian HQ. After long deliberations and great difficulty finding him a unit that his synchronization tests matched, they had finally found it. One would think there wasn't so many to choose form but the military couldn't be too careful.

The director of the Guardian HQ sat at his desk, waiting patiently. He was venerable, but still quite in his right mind, old age hadn't wearied his strength of character, in fact he had just sent a dejected second-in-command packing after a heated argument about that very operator and the unit he was to take control of.
There was more to this young man, especially after his results, Cadr had the highest scoring stats he'd ever seen in an Operator candidate, and they needed more Guardian units out there, one slip and it would be a disaster, if they put Cadr out there with that unit, he had a feeling they would be one of the best choices he'd ever made.

To say Cadr was intelligent was a bit of an understatement. He passed all of his tests to be an Operator with flying colors. He understood the cyber systems within the Guardian suits, and he seemed to know, almost on an instinctive level, how to get the best performance out of the suit itself. Part of it was his cyber-brain implants, he would admit. He'd gotten the 'upgrade' to a cyber-brain before he started training as an Operator, and it was incredibly helpful. It wasn't mandatory to have a cyber-brain before training started, but it was encouraged. It was mandatory to have one afterwards, or else connecting to a Guardian would be impossible.

Cadr had expected to be paired with a suit and Pilot right away, and had been stunned when he was told that there wasn't a suitable partner for him. He hadn't thought it was possible, surely there had to have been a mistake. He had insisted that he be partnered, and had been denied more than once, which was why it had come as such a surprise when he'd been sent a messenger, telling him that an assignment had finally been made.

Which brought him to where he was now; standing outside the door of the Director's office, waiting to be called in. It was only his training that kept him from fidgeting as he waited. He wasn't a terribly patient person by nature, and standing still in one room for very long made him want to move and keep himself distracted. It was the one drawback of having a cyber-brain, he was so used to lightning-fast mental stimulation that when that stimulation wasn't there, he got bored. He glanced at the door a few times. Hopefully, he would be called inside soon.

"Mr Ahern." The receptionist, Carrie, working diligently at the desk started up, looking over at Cadr calmly, her face almost like stone. Not alot of people could tell right away what she was, she was a cyborg, a full-blown humanoid machine, there was an odd perfection and precision in her actions as she worked and as she spoke, not robotic, by any means but like it was all perfectly calculated and prepared,
"Commander Gallus would like to see you now. Lieutenant-Commander Striker has departed and your meeting is now at Zero-Four-Zero-Zero hours. We apologize for for the one hour delay and ask you forgive us any stresses this may place upon you. Please," she angled gently towards the door, a soft quartet of clicks at the door unlocked it and an angered man stormed out, shooting a glare at Cadr before carrying on.
One could distinctly hear him muttering to himself
"A waste.. A goddamn waste.. Foolish old man..!" He snarled, continuing to mutter to himself about something regarding the guardians but it got too inaudible to make sense. He was agitated, of that there was no doubt.
"Go on through." Carrie stated in a plastic fashion, having kept her pose perfect, in spite of the interruption by Striker.

Commander Gallus watched as the second set of doors opened, waiting until Cadr had entered before standing calmly and placing his hands behind his back,
"Please sit, Mr Ahern. This meeting has been a long time coming, ever since I instituted this program and founded the Guardians." He smiled under a ruffled moustache, white and grey mixed in neatly. He had an oddly kind face for a Commander. Unlike most military types he had achieved a sense of peace even in the midst of war,
"I apologize for having taken so long to find you a matching Guardian Unit, your brilliance precedes you. I have concentrate don your case since it was presented to me after your tests. We ran your pattern against every Guardian unit we have and every simulated setting crashed due to incompatibility. The Allegory Manipulation System installed in the suit to connect the pilot would go into a frenzy, in some cases even cause a self destruct due to outside tampering." The man raised a hand to his bear, gently stroking at his chin with a smile,
"But then I struck upon an idea.. And I was right.. Now, I dont normally show anyone this but you are a special case, dear boy. Come." He motioned to a side door, it was an elevator leading down to the lower levels, the storage bays for additional Guardian units. The pilots were typically kept separate and in training until their unit was prepared.

As the Commander entered the elevator and turned to face outward, he folded his arms behind him to look at Cadr with a smile,
"Any questions so far, young man?"

Cadr listened quietly as the Commander spoke. He had wondered why he hadn't been assigned a pilot and Guardian unit, but it seemed like that was about to be corrected. He was curious, though... Why had he been so hard to match to? Was it a glitch in the system, or was it somehow his own fault? He had never heard of any Operator who managed to crash the system the way the Commander was explaining.

"Sir, if I might ask," he said, "why was my test pattern so difficult to find a match for? Was there some sort of irregularity with my results?" It seemed like a good question to ask. He wasn't quite as curious about the Guardian unit as he was about why none of the others were compatible. If this one was compatible with him, then he wasn't all that worried about it. He would need to get to know his Pilot, certainly, but there would be time for that. He stopped walking when the Commander did, waiting for the man to continue walking. He had no other questions besides the one that he had already asked.

"Well, lad," The commander started, pressing the button that would make the elevator descend. He looked aside to Cadr raising a brow calmly, "It's not that you're wrong, it's that the system was built to deal with the irregularities of humanity. When it came across something that presented more logic than it could conceive, it had to adjust for a whole new kind of irregularity. To put it in mundane terms, it was much like your results had become a virus of sorts. It couldn't cope with it and shut down." He shrugged a little bit, shaking his head and chuckling,
"The hardened military fools that look at Guardians and see a simple robotic fighting machine astounds me to no end. Guardian units use a partially complete artificial intelligence matrix. I'm sure you've read about this. The functionality is all there, like a coma patient on life support if you will. But it cannot breath and think until it's brought back to stability. A man like yours is an over-stimulation, a powerful drug that cripples a simpler mind. So the only way to balance you out is to give you the unit that has the strongest A.I. matrix, or rather, a complete one."

Gallus cleared his throat calmly as the elevator came to a halt, that odd lurch that Elevators never got rid of as it slowed to a halt, making the riders inside feel as though they were just a little bit heavier. The doors hissed open and a blanket of mist rushed in down at ankle height,
"My second-in-command despises this idea, and I don't blame him, frankly he wanted to refuse you Operator status. Try to push you into another field. But a man like you isn't like that, you're set on this goal, you've wante dit for a good while and haven't given up, I admire that trait." He explained, walking along the dimly lit storage. There were great racks on either side of them, solid containment units that stored the Guardian armours,
"So I'm trusting you, Mr Ahern, with this unit. As you may know this isn't standard procedure. Operators dont enter the warehouse, they dont need to, they meet their unit topside, their pilot too, but this is a special case." He turned when they were halfway through to the centre of the storage units. there was a doorway in the distance, already open, light poured through it and the shape of an open storage unit could be seen, but the bright illumination made it difficult for a moment to make it out.

The Guardian stood like a silent sentry in the open container, silent, ever watching, a sentinel in this dark place, it practically hummed with energy as though it was as alive as the old commander claimed. But it was as they entered that something a little stranger would become apparent.
Left of the doorway, deeper in the room, stood a glass container, And within, suspended in stasis, floated the figure of a young woman. The glass was etched finely with two numerals, 00,
"I give you Unit Zero. The template, the prototype. You may have heard that the project started as Prometheus, idiot Militaries and their fool names, this is the fire that was handed to us they would say. I didn't come here to create myths and legends. But all the same, you look upon the first of their kind. When she was awake she preferred the name Lily." The commander sighed, reaching into his jacket and pulled out an Omnitool Document. It was a holographic file that could only be accessed by specific patterns, this one belonging to Cadr,
"The activation codes for Unit Zero are all here. Download them, scrub the ghost data and encrypt the files as your training showed you. When you access Unit Zero, you will find one final activation code within it, but its a single use code. It's for her. A small part of her sits inside the unit, waiting patiently for some-one to awaken her." He chuckled, rubbing his chin softly,
"You could say it is like she is sitting in her home, where it is peaceful, but a part of her looks occasionally at the door, wondering if some-one will come to see her. She has been alone for a very long time it's only fair that she would finally want company.." He looked sternly in Cadr's direciton, "Be ready.. You will be drawn into her realm before it is over, a visual representation of her mind. What you see in there is between you and her alone, it is the same with all Operators and their Pilots, but she's nothing like the others and you cannot expect everything you've been prepared for. Understand?"

Cadr listened carefully as the Commander spoke, filing away the important information in his memory banks. It was more intriguing than he really wanted to admit; clearly the Zero Unit was a very closely-guarded secret and he was already looking forward to linking up to the unit. He glanced at the young woman in the stasis tank. He had never heard of a Pilot being kept in stasis like that, but everything about this assignment was unusual, so he tried to take it in stride.

He accepted the Omnitool Document from the Commander.

"I understand. I will make sure everything is up to par," he said. He was confident that he wouldn't have any troubles downloading the files and running the proper scripts to scrub and encrypt the information. He would be able to run the protocol in his sleep if he wanted to. He looked back at the Guardian unit and the Pilot in the stasis tank. There was no time like the present to link up... Opening the code files, he began to run the programs to input the activation codes.

As the lines of data began to fill, the sequences engaging the suits systems would show, window after window of information run-times activating. As he did so the suit seemed to breath to life, dormant lights and diodes showing themselves, the faint whirs and clicks of the intricate machinery within beginning to function. But even as that was occurring, something else was there, waiting beyond the data.
Cadr would watch as it was all stripped away from the center of his field of vision, torn at the edges and pulling him forward into the Pilot's mind.

All Operators shared small stories, rumors of what it was like to be int he mind of a Pilot. It was a violent place, filled with the darkest natures of humanity but aimed at a specific purpose, the destruction of its named target. Anyone would know to brace themselves for the horrors that waited. A few Operators had even retired, the more extreme calling it the technology of a devil.
Yet as the last of the information was stripped away, there was only light at first, brilliant, but not blinding. And then came the fields. The image practically rushed at Cadr until it all became calm. A clear sky of blue that seemed to dance like an aurora. Stood out in the field was the same figure of the woman in the tank, but dressed dirffferently. She wore a white dress down to her ankles, feet bare as she stared across the city.
Cadr would have recognized it as the Megacity Juno 2, the same one he resided in. But this vision of the land beyond the city was incorrect. The land outside the city was a lot more barren, rocky, a desert, damaged by Ixarren bombing.

There were no images of violence, no continuous desire to kill or be killed, no ongoing need for combat. Just a dream.
Lily turned away from the city to stare at Cadr. A gentle little smile on her face, her hands interlacing behind her as she examined the man, the smile growing that bit wider,
"Hello." She greeted him, "Are you lost?"

Cadr had heard the rumors about what it was like inside the mind of a Pilot, and braced himself when he started to get pulled in. He'd heard about how dark and violent it would be, and he was as ready as he could be for it. He wasn't ready to see Megacity Juno 2 looking like something out of an old movie. It was so strange, he wasn't used to the land around the city looking so... alive. He was far more used to the barren, desolate landscape that was really there.

He didn't notice the young woman at first. He was absorbed in looking around, trying reconcile what he was seeing with what he thought he would be seeing. Maybe it was just something else to file away with all of the other unusual parts of his assignment. He turned when he heard her speak.

"You must be..." he looked for the name in his memory banks, "Lily." He glanced around. "Is this place yours?" In the back of his mind, he knew the protocols and scripts were still running, but he wasn't consciously running them anymore. All of the activation codes for the Guardian suit itself were almost done running, as far as he knew. Technology ran very quickly these days.

"No." Lily grinned, "This is ours, and theirs." She pointed towards the city. If anything she must have meant the people in it. The young woman folded her arms softly and looked back at the man, a curious look on her face, as if she was working something through in her mind,
"Oh I see.. It's time.." She stated, lowering her head a little, though turned towards him and practically leaped at Cadr, folding her arms around his neck, planting the softest of kisses on his cheek before the world seemed to disintegrate, the real world returning, but something remained in Cadr's vision, a simple line of text, dim and fading slowly,
Don't forget me

The Commander had been watching the scene patiently. As Cadr had worked to activate both the suit and the Pilot. He'd never imagined he would witness this event in his lifetime. Unit Zero and Liliana, they were his greatest ambition come to life, more than most people could imagine beyond their own two eyes. The Guardian had actually twitched and shifted several times, eventually taking several steps forward of its own accord.
The truth of the matter was it didn't function as simple plating and external weaponry. It had its own motor systems and a smart, hardened muscle weave as the under layer. Guardians could be entirely autonomous if they were programmed fully, but truthfully they cold only perform basic functions such as walking on their own.

The allegory manipulation system was what made them come alive with a pilot inside. It would tap directly into the nervous system of the host and link to their mind's cyber-frame, The suit would do the walking, the moving, the fighting, and the pilot would act as its brain. In spite of the great technology behind it all, a Guardian needed extreme proximity to its Pilot to function, they couldn't simply fit an Operator to a Guardian and leave it at that. Commander Gallus didn't want mobile dolls, he didn't want simple puppets.
Meanwhile an Operator could stay at a distance and regulate everything, watch them, stop them if they had to, or allow for extreme measures. It was a perfect setup in his mind. But having to give some-one Lily was difficult even for him,
"I have no genetic legacy to carry on my family name, Mr Ahern." The Commander stated, watching as the glass tank opened, having been drained of stasis fluid, various gases breaking down the fluids and bringing the pilot around,
"But I have my legacy, Unit Zero and Liliana," He smirked, rubbing his chin as the young woman stood, having momentarily lost her balance before she pulled herself out of the tank. She took a few steps, adjusting her uniform but the look on her face was far different to the one in her mind. There was anger etched in her features, distaste, she looked at the Commander, then to Cadr, focusing for a moment,
"I don't know you.." She turned to Gallus, her brow furrowing, "Why am I awake?" She demanded,
"You know why, Liliana." The Commander chuckled, but the woman just folded her arms, staring blankly at Ahern,
".. He's shorter than I expected.. Are they letting kids become Operators now?" She questioned, obviously seeming displeased, "And I told you to call me Lily, old man."
The last stab at him made Gallus smirk again, he had been expecting this behavior, after all it was how she always acted, out here at least.

The sudden change in behavior surprised Cadr. He hadn't expected her personality difference to be so radical. He didn't say anything during the exchange, though. It was clearly something that was familiar to both the Commander and the Pilot, and Cadr didn't want to intrude on it. He did listen to it, though, and just filed it away like he did all of the potentially useful things he heard. He tagged the conversation and stashed the audio file in a folder of miscellaneous files, in case it turned out to be important later on.

He was more focused on thinking about what he'd seen in the pilot's mind (although he still wasn't sure what name to call her by; it seemed like she answered to either). She had seemed so innocent and sweet in the initial link-up, but that could have easily been a sort of placeholder-AI created in her image. Anyone could put such a thing together nowadays, it was a fairly simple piece of programming. But what did she mean by don't forget her? Anyone with a cyber-brain could instantly recall information, as long as it was saved first, even if it was just a temporary save. The only way to really forget something was to delete it and clear the information path, so there was really no reason for her to assume he would forget any part of the initial link-up. After a few moments of thought, he turned his attention back to the Commander and the pilot.

"What is he? Mute?" Lily asked suddenly, staring at Cadr oddly, "Finally, a guy who keeps his trap shut in the real world and listens! That what you've been doing out here so long, old man? Breeding some super-disciplined mute operators?" She asked, waving a hand at him as though expecting some reaction, what was once "London, England" had soldiers that stood stock still and quiet, she half-figured he was something like that,
"Lily, that's enough." The Commander stated firmly. The young woman looked at him for a moment and folded her arms,
"Screw you old man! I've been sleeping-"
"A very long time, you're hungry, you're in a bad mood, I understand." The Commander chuckled, cutting her off quite easily. She gave him a rather perturbed look before going over to the Guardian unit and knocking on its helm,
"Hey, Promy, get your ass in gear and follow us." She ordered. The machine's head turned dully towards Lily then looked towards Cadr, at least one could assume it was looking,
"I'm going to the cafeteria, Operator-boy, try to keep up and use any big words you might have, hell use small ones and we'll be good to go.."

The woman practically stormed out of the room, the armoured suit clunking after her solemnly, but Commander Gallus sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose,
"She was always rather troublesome.. But there's good in her. She won't admit it out loud. I've never tried to intrude to be sure, but it's there." He sighed, patting Cadr on the shoulder, "Look after her, and let her look after you. She's not a monster, oh and.. She likes sweet treats." He chuckled, seemingly still bemused by her behaviour, but all the same he was serious,
"Don't let her go for fast food though, she's not biologically equipped to handle it.. Goes down fine, but not so great coming back up. Also on a more important note, your Standby Unit is being prepped, you have a couple of engineers on standby,"
As was standard for a Guardian unit, it had a Standby Unit, which was a fancy term for an armoured truck that happened to have the necessary space for several workers, a Guardian and the materials needed to fix the armour. they didn't need training spaces because training tactics and everything else was done in the mind, plans were exchanged by the pilot and their operator.

"She seems... forceful," Cadr responded carefully. He'd never heard of any Pilot who had such a strong personality the way Lily seemed to. They all had different personalities, sure, but he hadn't heard about any who were so vocal. "I will admit, the difference is a bit jarring. Was she using any sort of placeholder or avatar?"

He didn't mind staying to talk to the Commander for a few moments more. He would be able to find Lily again, he wasn't worried. He knew from his training that Operators and Pilots had a kind of distant link through their shared Guardian unit, and could keep track of one another that way. He glanced in the direction that Lily went. "I doubt that one needs anyone to look after her." He didn't add that he could look after himself just fine; it could be taken as bordering on disrespect, and he tried not to disrespect his superiors when he could help it.

He nodded when the Commander mentioned the Standby Unit. "Alright, thank you for telling me, sir. If that's everything, I get the feeling I should follow her."

The Commander chuckled when Cadr responded, forceful wasn't the half of it. The boy didn't know her entire history yet, but sooner or later some-one would let it slip, specifically some hot-tempered lieutenant commander.. But Cadr was taking it in stride, which surprised Gallus and ensured him that perhaps this would go even better than he imagined,
"A placeholder..?" The Commander wondered for a moment, "Whatever you saw in there was her true nature. I understand it was probably terribly unusual, but I've never been in there, yes I helped to build the framework but her personality has developed on its own for some time now. Her stasis came with simulation software so she could continue to exist internally. Evolve her skills, her talents and solidify her training. For having entered such a mind you're taking it rather well. Is there something I should know, Mr Ahern?" He questioned, raising a brow.

He looked in the direction of the door, adjusting his uniform but then stared about at the relatively empty chamber,
"While I admire your extraordinarily apt of perception, young man, Liliana isn't entirely one to get along with people.. She loathes other pilots, Operators, the military, and just about everyone." He ticked off the check-list in his head and chuckled, "And just about anyone resembling a scientist.. So she's likely to.. Get in a spot of trouble.." He mentioned the last bit as delicately as possible,
"I would recommend you don't underestimate the kind of trouble she can get herself into.. And as you'll be out there defending the city you'd do well to respect the kind of trouble she can get you out of."

He proceeded out of the room, hands rested behind his back as he walked towards the elevator,
"Come, I need to get back to my office and you need to go after her, before the former occurs, preferably."

"Yes, sir," Cadr said as he followed the Commander back into the elevator. His mind was still going over everything he'd learned so far. If Lily's true nature was the sweet, seemingly-innocent girl from the vision, what had happened to turn her into such a jaded bitch? He was fairly sure he'd find out eventually, but that didn't mean he wasn't curious about it now. It wasn't time to think about that now, though... The Commander was right. Cadr had to go upstairs and see what kind of trouble his pilot was trying to get herself into.

When the elevator stopped Cadr waited until the Commander had stepped out before exiting himself and walking in the opposite direction, towards the cafeteria. He didn't hear any signs of fighting yet, but that didn't mean that there wasn't any trouble starting. It was actually fairly common for arguments and pissing contests to happen over the communal wireless, rather than out loud. The younger men, mostly fresh recruits, thought they were being sneaky when they hooked into the wireless for such things, but everyone knew about it. As he got closer to the cafeteria, his cyber brain automatically hooked into the wireless, just as he set it to. A whole second layer of conversation materialized alongside the physical talking he could hear as he walked into the cafeteria, this time within his mind, but he tuned most of it out.

Perhaps the biggest topic of conversation as Cadr entered was the fact that a Guardian Unit was in the Cafeteria not to mention a dozen and one questions about the new girl, some from excitable little boy troopers, others from suspicious women, there even seemed to be several attempts at communication with what was currently registered as User: Unknown.//F One could only assume it was Liliana since she didn't actually have a currently registered name on the system. Every repeated attempt at communication seemed to be blocked off at an intersection, surprisingly enough by a second user, Prometheus.

Of course not only did this confuse some, after all a guardian unit was actually cutting them off, it aggravated others, because by all rights it meant Lily was ignoring them all completely. She was already getting looks and stares as she calmly demanded an assortment of goodies from the staff, almost blissfully ignorant of the attempted connections.
Of course it probably didn't help that the attempts to connect were not only being blocked but a return message from Prometheus would be sent, composed of a small cartoon-like picture resembling Lily pulling a face that practically stated "Nana-nana-naa-naa" with the clearly printed words Access Blocked. It was all so clearly concentrated on her that few barely even noticed Cadr enter.

Lily in the meantime had found herself a table and dropped what was essentially a pile of random food items onto the surface. And considering her small frame there were already spreading doubts she could even eat it all. Needless to say she was attracting all kinds of attention, even as she began taste testing random things. Ranging from new chocolate bars that she didn't recognize, old favourites that she remembered, snacks, soft drinks, carbonated drinks. She barely even stopped for a breath in between trying them all at complete random, there seemed to be no real pattern to it.
At best people could just say she was very hungry. Cadr probably knew this to be true, but at worst it just looked like she was pigging out completely. Which added a sense of disgust to the shared commentary that hummed in the background of the virtual conversations.
The biggest question that seemed to pop up most was; Who the hell is she?

Cadr could hear a few angry murmurs from the common conversational space on the wireless, and it didn't take him long to figure out why everyone was so annoyed. Lily was sitting at a table against the far wall with a literal pile of things in front of her. Most of what Cadr could see was snacks and junk food, and he watched for a moment as Lily's hands flashed out every few moments to pick up a different package and open it. After a second or two, he switched his username from invisible to active and sent her a ping. He figured if anyone could get past Prometheus, it was him.

CAhern: That much junk food is bad for just about anyone, you know.

From what he observed about her, and from what the Commander told him about her, that would annoy her enough to at least speak to him, if nothing else. Of course, it might also piss off everyone else in the room if he actually managed to get the message through to her, but he wasn't worried about that. Slipping through the crowd, he sat down across from her at the table.

"Aaaaah, so he does communicate!" The pilot replied pointing at Cadr as he sat down, "I guess being mute isn't all bad though, but if you can actually use your vocal cords, I suggest you use it. I mean good grief, I've seen every conversation in this room and I cannot believe the absolute drivel that gets spouted!" She chuckled, flitting a glance over at some of the closer ones,
"The things I've seen.. Why I could find at least twelve court martial offences and other sever penalizations for some of the information passing around in here.." She stated this fact quite dully but just laughed as certain ones began to look even more furious, the woman shrugged and leaned on one hand towards Cadr,
"But It's so fun to watch them squirm.." She added with a rather malicious look coming across their face,
"And the boasts too!" She placed both of her hands in a mocking gasp, "The highest scorer has an 82 percent average! My-my.. It's a wonder this city's even standing.."

By this time there were several shouts of protest from those she was regarding, whoever the top dog with that score was, he was annoyed, but even as he got up to approach, the Guardian unit turned in an almost menacing sweep, the helm staring blankly in his direction. The almost alien whirring and churning within made a noise that practically sounded like a warning to stay his distance, the sound reverberating for a while before it was silent again.
Even though most knew it couldn't do much more than simple things, it seemed to be fully mobile, in spite of not even being totally connected.
While this would have seemed normally, it was showing more and more signs of being physically capable on its own. Proof that it was very different indeed, or rather both it and the pilot were. And that menacing form was not to be underestimated, connected or not. A trail of Led lighting was spreading across the mask now, a trademark of combat readiness, the activation of the lights spreading throughout the sight and fading again, the pulse of a unit in hostile standby.
"Promy, calm down." The pilot stated, looking up at the unit. It actually looked over its shoulder, the lighting fixing on the side of the mask what was shown towards her and Cadr. While others might consider it puppetry, Cadr could see better. there were recognition patterns in the data. the Unit was actually responding to outside stimuli,
"She's ever so protective, honestly, she really is darling," Lily whispered behind her hand to Cadr, "Anyway, as for the food, I need sugar to force my Bio-Neural pathways open, haven't you already figured out I'm not normal? Didn't the old man blather on long enough? For a smart guy you're really not too bright." With that she chomped part of a candy bar off.

"I didn't say not to have any of it," Cadr replied mildly. "I said that much of it isn't good for anyone." He reached over and plucked a candy bar out of the pile, giving her a look that just dared her to object. He wasn't used to letting anyone have their way, and he wasn't going to start with her. When the Unit next to her started to warn off the others in the room, his expression went from slightly amused to a bit more warning. "I would think you should leave the Unit with the others," he said. "It shouldn't be in the cafeteria. I don't see any reason to have it in here." He could shut it down if he had to, but he wanted to see what Lily would do, first. He glanced around the cafeteria at the outraged faces.

"It's not fair to ride them like that, you know," he added after a moment. "Most of them look like they're still fairly green." He knew that was no excuse, but everyone gave the 'new guys' some slack for a little while, until they stopped being less stupid. They weren't cut slack for very long, though.

"Ah-ha!" Lily snorted, coughing a little, "And you think the means they wouldn't be the first to try and stick it to me? It's human nature, I'm sure you're accustomed to it. The primal reflexes here-" She pointed towards one of her arms, poking the muscle, or lack thereof, "Hold more importance than the ones here," She pointed at her temple, obviously meaning her brain, "In case you hadn't noticed I dont exactly fit the physical profile of a pilot, there's more than enough muscle and testosterone here to carve out another man or two to send into the program." She was right, compared to most pilots, who took to physical augmentation and training, she was actually relatively skinny. Chalk it down to a lack of diet or even exercise in stasis. Unlike natural physical degeneration it kept the muscles at minimal peak and kept the body nourished just enough, it wasn't perfect technology.
But this wasn't entirely the case for Liliana..
"People judge you after so much as looking at you." Liliana shrugged, "So I do the same in return,"

"And there's no way in hell I'm leaving Promy near substandard, degenerate offspring like units One-onwards." She proclaimed as quietly as she could, gagging at the very thought, but the machine besides them seemed to stare in Lily's direction, was it actually disapproving what she'd said? Liliana looked back at it and frowned, then folded her arms,
"Oh come on, they're nothing like you, they're mindless husks. Human cannibals did the same thing you know, wearing the skin of the dead over their own, that's what the units are now, dead skin with brutal, twisted creatures wearing them into combat," The suit seeme dot lurch forward slightly, staring closer at Liliana, and she actually stopped, sighing and looking away,
"Yeah I know.." She mumbled, resting her head on her chin and staring blandly at Cadr,
"He didn't tell you anything else about me, did he?" She asked in a rather matter-of-fact manner, "You'd best start asking because I dont like having to explain myself to anyone, humanity is too complicated and you need too much explanation for everything if you want complicated you can go rooting around in here again." She thumbed at her head again suggesting that dream realm he'd seen before,
"There's plenty complicated for you to feast on there, I dont have time for it and I dont have time for all that other nonsense that the rest of me figures out for me."

"If the Unit is so much better, then there shouldn't be any reason why you can't leave it with the others," Cadr pointed out. It wasn't as if it could be hacked or anything, not when it had such an unusual, advanced system. Nobody else would know what to do with it. "Nothing could possibly happen to it in the half an hour it takes to actually eat in here." And nothing said that Lily had to STAY in the cafeteria, anyways, but he wasn't going to point that out quite yet. He wanted to keep her localized mayhem contained for the moment. He hadn't missed the way the suit had looked at her, either, but he didn't want to think about the fact that it seemed to actually have an expression on its 'face.' That was just bizarre, and it would take him a while to get used to if it was going to be a regular occurrence with the suit. As it stood, he still wasn't used to referring to it by name yet, although Lily seemed to have no such issues. He watched the 'exchange' between the two, and had the vague notion that the suit might actually be on his side for this one. The thought was oddly cheering.

"No, I didn't get the chance to ask very many questions at all," he added when Lily asked him about his conversation with the Commander. "He had to go back to his own obligations, and I felt it would be best if I followed you for the time being." No way in hell was he going to add that he wanted to keep an eye on her for when she started trouble. That was an argument he wasn't going to walk into. "Although, I don't suppose you would want to just talk normally at all." He wasn't normally one for asking so many questions; ask the right ones and you seemed brilliant, ask the wrong ones and you seemed stupid. He didn't want to take such a pointless risk, so he observed to get his answers instead.

"Fine let me give you the basic version. I'm loud, I'm proud and I'm the best pilot in existence, for further references read my AMS aptitude diagnostics and my combat grades." On this very command Prometheus actually shared the files with Cadr. She wasn't joking when she mentioned these either, after all, the average AMS aptitude was in the eightieth percentile. No-one had 100% synchronization with their unit, no pilot. And event he pest were stretching it at 97%, a peak which made noses bleed and shut nervous systems down when pushed by most others. Every diagnostic test for Liliana and Prometheus read at 100%, it didn't falter or waver under any of the stress tests, in most cases this would cause it to fall, sometimes drastically. Anything below 20% would have resulted in catastrophic failure but she stayed will up there.

Her overall combat grade of S also suggested she was exactly as good as she stated. Every single simulation that had been run was checked with an S-Rank grade. In most of the advanced tests such a grade could only be accomplished by a team of Guardian units working together collectively but the evidence was there for viewing, going into extreme detail of her actions and the procedures that allowed her to achieve such a high grade of her own volition,
"I believe the metaphorical phrase is that I'm the Guardian equivalent of a Thermonuclear weapon. Handle with care." She winked at Cadr with a wry smirk before folding her arms again, "But dont take it dramatically. Those tests were generated by non-stop simulation, trial and error for years during my stasis. They're also developed by the fact that in simulations I wasn't restricted by an Operator, I'm going to have to improvise with you, already there's little alarms going off in your head because you're beginning to realize what you're keeping on a chain here. What will you do? Restrict me from doing anything? Puppeteer my every move like a control freak?" She rolled her eyes and looked away from both the suit and Cadr,
"What a thing to be woken up for.. Should have just left me to rot in the tank."

Cadr accepted the files from the Guardian unit, but didn't open them yet. He would open and read them when he had time to really go over the information without having to stop for any reason.

"But you're not as rough and callous as you want to seem," he observed after a moment. That much was clear to him, even after only talking to her for a few minutes. She was actually more playful than anything, although she seemed to try to hide it behind rude behavior. "You have to improvise with me, I have to improvise with you and the Unit, so maybe we'll both learn to live with it." He sat back in his chair, leaving the candy bar he'd snitched from her sit on the table between them, still wrapped. "I'm not really what anyone would call a real control freak. A nudge here and there, maybe." Piloting the suit was supposed to he her job. Unless she started to go completely insane, he wasn't going to make her job any harder than it was. There was a world of difference between cooperation and control. He paused for a moment. "Though I would think it's better out here where you can actually interact with real people instead of just running programs in the tank."

"Oh shut up you," The woman protested, grumbling under her breath about Cadr being such a smarty-pants before grabbing another snack-bar, she bit into it but then gagged, staring at it for a bit, "Chocolate with COFFEE?!" She exclaimed, "Who the hell comes up with this stuff..?!" The woman grabbed a juice box and drained it completely before gasping for air,
"Much better.. Anyway, you-!" She pointed at Cadr, "Make a good point.." She ended it almost anticlimactically, "And it's good to see you're not slow. And be careful where you nudge, Promy and I might not take kindly to it." She stared at him blandly then looked at the goliath feminine figure beside them. Cadr could see the information streaming between the two as Lily ran a diagnostics. She was mostly going over weapons to make sure everything was fully functional.
A Guardian unit was supplied with nanomites that were limited to specific builds and system modification to allow for the different weapon systems that were programmed into a Guardian unit. Essentially the suit acted as a factory for bullets, batteries and whatever else was needed for its weapons. it could even produce the energy for sustained flight and other utilities. The nanomites were directly linked to the Guardian unit's control systems and worked with extreme speed to transform and adjust it
Weapons could range from small hand cannons and machineguns to rocket launchers, micro-missiles, grenades and in melee, typically, a solid-light blade. Since it was made of pure light energy, having the blade go so much as atom thin didn't damage its integrity. Unfortunately it was useless against barriers and most shielding technology and was purely meant for unshielded targets or for use as a rescue tool.
there were some records of previous guardian units customising programs for specific weapons such as chainsaws and other non-standard tech, but the approval for such modifications was rare, on the odd occasion it was made standard fare to have certain weapon upgrades.

In Lily's checks however, she seemed to be concentrating heavily on booster systems as well. Guardian units were fitted with over a dozen vernier ports that allowed them to balance themselves in the air for flight manoeuvres, But according to her diagnostics Prometheus actually held double the standard number. The locations of these additional units seemed to be masked by the presence of the standard verniers. But oddly enough two were registers to either shoulder and four to each arm.
"People don't interest me. I saw enough of people to fill two lifetimes." Lily stated boredly, "One thing remains a constant, you're always at war in some way or another, be it big bloody battles like this or political and gang-related foolishness." She stopped looking at Prometheus and stared at Cadr in a dull way,
"I dont have to be psychic to know that they'll put us on the front lines when space ships and space fighters and battleships aren't enough. Bastards, waking me up for this crap. And that Old Man. He knows where its going to, he's practically begging for it to happen, twisted, senile old fool."

"Would you rather have been literally woken up for nothing?" Cadr pointed out as he reached over and took one of the espresso bars. He rather liked the combination of chocolate and coffee. "To have been pulled out of stasis just to sit around with nothing to do?" He already had a pretty good idea of the answer. Just watching her, he knew that she needed to keep her mind occupied. There was a near-constant flow of information between her and the Zero Unit next to her the entire time he'd been sitting there. She would have been even less pleased at being told to sit and twiddle her thumbs than she was now. It was pretty clear that she was more action-oriented than command-oriented, just like any other pilot. "It could always be that much worse. This way, at least, you'll be able to prove just how amazing you and the Unit are." Unwrapping the espresso bar, he took a bite out of it.

"On an unrelated note, chocolate and coffee is a good combination," he added, just the least bit teasingly. "You just don't have good taste yet, but we can fix that, I'm sure." He grinned the slightest bit.

"That or I need to beat your bad taste out of you." Lily replied, glaring at Cadr, "Coffee and Chocolate.. Yuck." She stuck her tongue out, then folded her arms, taking on a stubborn look once again, "I'd have preferred not to be woken up at all," she replied quite coldly. There was a bit of malice behind her voice, it was obviously a very touchy subject, "I shouldn't have to prove how good I am, they wanted me in stasis because of how dangerous and valuable I was supposed to be. Which means if I'm being dragged out just to be linked to the number one brain on the block, they're getting desperate, or perhaps the old man was feeling nostalgic.. They could easily have pawned you off to some other high ranking role because of your brains."

She stood up suddenly, picking up various pieces until she had full clumps of the now-trash in her hands and placed it in a nearby disposal unit, repeating the process until there was pretty much nothing left. The other people in the cafeteria had mostly gotten back to their own conversations but a good few were obviously still narked about her little performance. There were still futile attempts to get in on the 'open' channels of Cadr and Lily, but still Prometheus blocked them off,
"So what happens now?" She asked, folding her arms and staring at Cadr, "Do we register? Go to a garage or something? I never saw the outside of the testing centers and chambers or where the process went from there."