A week. She’s said a week at the fastest. The problem was a week was too fast. She could do it, but with a situation like the one she was going to put herself into, she needed to be cautious and have as much information as she could. And her skills needed honing brushing up. Something to trip her up and test her reflexes. She entered the shuttle bay and walked over to Valkyrja. She pressed a hand to the biometric reader and entered. Alfred shimmered into exsistance but she waved him away before he could speak. She opened a hidden cargo locker and withdrew a mek’leth with the simple for house Klrin on it.

She sat down on one of the rear benches and turned the blade over and over in her hand. It was a magnificent piece of craftmanship. It was well balanced and sharp enough and strong enough to slice cleanly through flesh and bone. It was a weapon that she knew every knick and every scratch upon it. She knew it’s history intimately and had seen it bring deadly justice to many. The memories played across her mind, flashing in her eyes. She stood with a sigh, her hand on the handle and wielded it slowly, but with absolutely no skill. She knew this blade but she did not know how to use it. A new challenge to test her reflexes.

She locked the shuttle up and placed the mek’leth in a special holster on her back underneath her uniform jacket. She walked the corridors, silently, her steps making no sound on the deck plating beneath her feet. She appeared to be wandering aimlessly but in actuality she was slipping back into that hyper aware state that she’d arrived to Leviathan with. Testing it, stretching it, letting it wake up. She ended her stroll on the engineering deck, right about the time of shift change. She waited, looking for Kara Nakuto. She saw the former captain emerge from her work and waited for her to approach. Casela had not spoken with Kara since before the arrival of Akirel and Gruv.
She considered Kara a friend, and she wondered how Kara was handling the reappearance of one whom she had thought was lost. That loss had torn and rended pieces of Kara’s soul away. They had spoken of it. Did his reappearance soothe some of those wounds? Help her to find a way to face the darkness on this ship?

When Kara drew near, Casela spoke softly. “Kara, I need a favor. I need you to teach me how to use a mek’leth.”
Lt. Synthi-er,