Juno Steel and the Blank Slate (Part 1)

Arc poster by Ellison Estephan

**Juno Steel and the Blank Slate (Part 1)** is an episode of the Penumbra Podcast in the Juno Steel series. It is the twelfth Juno Steel episode of season 4, and the twenty-third overall.

## Overview

Here's a question: let's say you get a couple friends together and really piss off Dark Matters, the biggest and most powerful law enforcement operation in human history. Where can you go where they'll never find you?

### Trigger Warnings

* Physical and mental illness
* Enclosed spaces
* Sudden loud noises
* Violence and threats of violence
* Threats of self-harm/self-destruction
* Depictions of addiction

## Episode Summary

The Aurinko family, minus Peter Nureyev, flees to Jupiter in search of Dr. Hanataba. Jet Sikuliaq previously used a clinic of Hanataba's on Mars to remove the THEIA Spectrum from Juno Steel's eye socket, and the crew now hopes Hanataba can save Jet from a severe relapse of his addiction to neomethamphetamines forced on him by Dark Matters. Vespa Ilkay knows about another Hanataba clinic on Jupiter, from a medical contact. It's specifically designed to provide rehab from experimental drugs, and she suggests it might be worth giving Juno treatment to see if it will flush out the "Martian junk" still in his system from his adventure with Miasma.

Some time later, Vespa calls an emergency meeting to discuss Jet's lack of progress. Hanataba's equipment can detox a patient, but rehab requires intentional cooperation from them--and Jet has, instead, been asking the Ruby Seven to replicated neomethamphetamines for him to take. Rita gasps and tells the others about the Ruby making a bomb when she and Jet were on Neptune with the retired weapons designer M'tendere. Vespa says that the drug is a less-potent replica than the real thing--addictive, identifiable as neos, but somewhat like a "rough sketch." Buddy Aurinko wonders aloud what that means about the Ruby Seven, and Juno attempts to tell her his thoughts, but cries out in pain every time he tries to finish his sentence.

With the women's encouragement, he takes a few minutes to himself, musing that the headaches being sent to him are coming from the panic of the alien shapeshifter they know as the Ruby Seven. It's taking advantage of the residual mind-reading powers Juno acquired from the aforementioned "Martian junk" to share its emotions with Juno, and over the past season, the connection has gotten steadily stronger. Juno goes to check on Ruby, and finds Jet draped over its hood, asleep. Juno asks why it doesn't want the others to know what it is, and the Ruby whistles sheepishly. Juno decides it's allowed to have secrets, just like all of them, and tells it that its secret is safe, but he wants it to leave his brain out of it.

Vespa, when they resume the discussion, explains desperately that she doesn't want to separate Jet and the Ruby in case he's relying on it to stay alive. After further thought, Rita suggests they keep Jet company, and the four of them arrange shifts to both supervise him so he doesn't ask for more drugs, and make a show of love for him. All of them are afraid of staying in one place too long, but they also don't know where they can go next.

Later, Juno comes across Vespa freaking out because she's almost out of meds she stole from the prison in their escape, and the equivalents in Hanataba's clinic are expired. Without antipsychotics to offset the damage done to her by radiation, she's afraid she can't help. Rita and Buddy are also gloomy after their shifts with Jet, Buddy doubting she can ever retire, and Rita fearing they're not going to get out of this after all. When Juno takes his turn, he tries to steer Jet off of cynical conversation, and is unsurprised when Jet uses that to angle for drugs.

The Ruby gives Juno a flashback vision of Jet calming Rita down after M'tendere was shot, so Juno points out that Jet saved Rita and Ruby's lives, but Jet fixates on "letting" M'tendere die. Jet wants Juno to leave him behind, let him die swiftly, rather than risk anyone being caught by Dark Matters and tortured. Jet is miserable at the thought of being forced to watch them die because they won't let him make his own choice. Ruby and Juno share a montage of Jet being kind and heroic. Juno makes an attempt to remind him of these moments, but Jet cuts him off, self-loathing. Juno knows that people telling him they love him has never gotten through to him, but he's going to try to say it to Jet anyway.

Narrating, he says "But I never got the chance, because that's when things  got... weird." Juno has a strange, vivid vision of what it felt like to the Ruby Seven to perform the Pelican Bootleg successfully, trusting Jet and loving him. Juno points out that Jet's worth something to the Ruby Seven too, and pleads with it to tell Jet so, alarming Jet, who worries Juno is ill. Finally, Juno convinces the Ruby, and it shapeshifts into a liquid mirror, showing a version of Jet's reflection, as Ruby thinks of him. "[T]he Jet in the mirror, he looked... not delicate, exactly. More...  precious. Worth holding and protecting." It shifts again to envelop Jet's hand with finger-like tendrils. Jet swoons and vomits onto Juno, who tries to be good-natured about it, despite not having a clean change of clothes.

Ruby produces a drawer with clean clothes in it, a replica of the outfit Juno wore when Dark Matters raided the *Carte Blanche.* Juno laughs so hard Vespa comes to find out what's going on, and Juno brushes off her questions about Ruby in favor of telling her that he's figured out how they're going to beat Dark Matters.

## Cast

* Joshua Ilon as Juno Steel
* Alexander Stravinski as Jet
* Chloe Cunha as Vespa
* Sarah Gazdowicz as Buddy
* Kate Jones as Rita

## References

1. ↑ Juno Steel and the Monster's Reflection (Part 1)
2. ↑ Juno Steel and the Monster's Reflection (Part 2)
3. ↑ Juno Steel and the Monster's Reflection (Part 3)
4. ↑ Juno Steel and the Tools of Rust (Part 1)
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Juno Steel and the Tools of Rust (Part 2)
6. ↑ Juno Steel and the Clean Break (Part 2)