<div class="floatleft">(http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2013/053/1/6/16765d6dbbab2fe707faca3315a8cea2-d5k4jy8.png)</div><strong>~Jeanette Gagarin<br/>~Volleybounce</strong><br/><br/>Two-time heavyweight champion of saving the galaxy, Jeanette Gagarin, lay topless on a plastic chaise longue, scanning the beach idly behind large aviator-style sunglasses. The sun beat down on her too-white skin that had languored from being on a ship ninety percent of the time. She was clearly out of place in this setting, as she was surrounded by tanned, absurdly busty women who were somehow excellent at volleyball while acting like middle school morons. She had no idea how they could play in bikinis. The weight of their chests should have made them fall over.<br/><br/>Still, it was fun to watch. No one ever bothered her here; besides having a much harder body than the baller ditzes, she kept her Reckoner pulse rifle close at hand. There were rules for crossing games, but it didn’t hurt to be prepared. Jeanette felt the sun burning into her, cancerously damaging her skin, but that was easily treated back on her ship. There was nothing like the color of a real tan, and even in her far-future they hadn’t gotten fake tans quite right. Plus, this kept her hair a nice bleached blonde, and not the ratty color it turned when left to its own devices.<br/><br/>There was a lot to be said for a natural body. Jeanette came from a time where almost nothing was natural anymore. Implants, sentient synthetics, and mystical technologies had made everything a soup of definition, with almost no one being fully one thing or another. Even Jeanette was not exempt; her job demanded implants, and she had<em>many</em>. But at least her skin was still hers. For now, anyway.<br/><br/>“Tarkus,” she said, sitting up, “I’m outta here.”<br/><br/>The avian biped stopped chatting up one of the girls and clucked its beak. “Roger, Colonel. If you don’t mind, I’ll hang around here for a while.” He wasn’t feathered, but instead had a sort of carapace that resembled lizard scales. His head swooped back like a bird’s, and he had the piercing eyes of a hawk, but his beak was relatively small, looking more like some kind of mouth mask. He did, however, have the inverted knees. It was a strange package, and suitably alien.<br/><br/>He hadn’t really spoken, as his species communicated with clicks and chirps, but his implanted translator did the work for him, muting his natural voice and projecting human language. “Sure,” she replied. “Just don’t be late.” Swiveling herself to the side of the chair, she planted her feet in what looked like a pair of spiky boots. When she stood, the “boots” extended several cords that followed the curves of her body, forming a ring around her neck. The “boots” then used these cords as a sort of zipline up her body, growing into a full suit of armor. It<em>hissed</em>as it completed the seal.<br/><br/>Picking up her weapon, she waved to the girls that noticed her leaving, and made her way out into the Desktop.