Juno Steel and the Blank Slate (Part 2)

Arc poster by Ellison Estephan

**Juno Steel and the Blank Slate (Part 2)** is an episode of the Penumbra Podcast in the Juno Steel series. It is the thirteenth Juno Steel episode of season 4, and the twenty-fourth overall.

## Overview

The Aurinkos are ready for their last stand. Are 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

Juno Steel, Jet Sikuliaq, Rita, Buddy Aurinko, and Vespa Ilkay break into their former home, the *Carte Blanche.* Juno had guessed that Dark Matters would leave the ship intact in case the family left any research on the Curemother Prime or the Ruby Seven. Juno, narrating, admits that they *did*, but Dark Matters never found it. To retrieve Vespa's notes, hidden by Rita, the team needs to break in. Ruby insists on coming with them, but Juno asks that it not be "on car duty, too obvious."

Once aboard, the crew places and primes "packages" made by Jet, while Vespa forwards her notes to underground medicine friends, and some aboveground contacts as well. Buddy gives a short speech, and they prepare to fly the *Carte Blanche* out of Dark Matters headquarters. As they turn the ship on, an agent warns them over a speaker to surrender and exit the ship. Buddy responds that they are willing and ready to blow up the ship and destroy much of Dark Matters's hoard of seized material as well. Buddy demands that they be allowed to safely leave with the ship, and have their criminal records wiped. The agent laughs, joined in a chorus by other agents around the base, and denies having authority to do such a thing. Buddy tells them to find someone who *does*, and they wait for Director W.

Sasha demands that she negotiate one-on-one with Juno, eventually offering to let the other four leave in the stolen car they arrived in, if Juno and the *Carte Blanche* stay put for the moment. Juno agrees, seeing his family off. Rita, crying, makes him promise that if he can get out of this, he will. Juno is terrified, but confident that confronting Sasha is exactly where he needs to be.

Sasha boards the *Carte Blanche* and finds Juno in Buddy's office, where Sasha had interrogated Juno months ago. He thinks she looks sick and exhausted, her hair uncharacteristically messy. Juno muses in narration that when they were kids, silence had been a shared source of comfrt between the two of them. "Now it just made me feel more homesick than I ever had." Sasha, distressed and trying to remain professional, accuses Juno of attempting "suicide by cop." Juno and Sasha argue about the chain of events that any action results in, and Sasha's sworn responsibility to the Greater Good. She's driven in part by resentment that she, Juno, Mick Mercury, Annie Wire, and Benzaiten Steel were allowed to grow up in such miserable conditions as Oldtown. In an effort to "deep-clean" the galaxy, Sasha wants to simplify life. Juno observes that she's been calling Dark Matters targets "Radicals" because she wants to freeze progress, as if putting technology and thought on pause could give the opportunity she wants to fix things.

Juno gives Sasha a final chance to accede to his demands, which she refuses. He makes a comms call, and Sasha asks how long they have until the explosion. He cheerfully tells her that he wasn't ordering an explosion. At his urging, Sasha asks Agent L, over her own comms, to check in with their pharma contacts. Sasha admits to Juno that she has "destroyed Sasha Wire to make room for Director W," because she feels inadequate to be everything she wants a director of Dark Matters to be. Radicals keep slipping through her fingers.

Agent L tells Sasha that "an easily-replicable cure for radiation sickness is on the market for quarter-creds, and the entire pharmaceutical industry is *aflame*." Sasha is horrified, afraid that if the pharmaceutical companies cannot uphold their responsibilities and pay their debts, chaos will result from desperation. Juno is unmoved, and threatens to release the cure for the common cold if she doesn't cooperate with him, saying that she failed to destroy the Curemother Prime and he still has it. Sasha relents and orders the wipe of the criminal records of all five identified members of the crime family (Peter "Ransom" being unknown and absent).

She then shoots Juno with a laser, but the Ruby Seven pours out of his pocket and absorbs the blast. Juno and Ruby planned for this encounter, but so did Sasha, and she reveals "a shortwave electromagnetic field generator" is preventing Ruby from shapeshifting again. Sasha then orders her agents to destroy the *Carte Blanche*, telling Juno she will destroy three Radicals in the process: Ruby, Juno, and herself. "My announcement signaling the end of space-crime was a disaster, and as a result crime has only escalated. I was, unintentionally, a Radical. In resisting change so poorly I only created more of it."

Juno narrates that a one-on-one battle of smarts between him and Sasha was always going to end with Sasha's victory, but that he's learned from working with the Aurinkos that very few battles have to be one-on-one. Ruby projects an image in Juno's mind, and he thinks that if it tells him to shoot Sasha, he won't be able to do it. Instead, Ruby suggests Juno shoot at *it*, and he does, breaking the electromagnetic hold on it. As equipment short-circuits, Sasha is knocked over by a shockwave, and Ruby whisks Juno away in the shape of a motorcycle. They race through the ship and exit, surrounded by agents. As Juno and Ruby share an emotional synergy, and he reflects on their mutual love, the Ruby begins to fly, and they escape, Ruby shifting around him back into the form of a car for the final push.

As the Dark Matters headquarters recedes into the distance, Juno and Rita talk over comms about how easy it will be to fulfill their end of the deal...because the cure for radiation sickness was *all* Vespa was able to salvage from the residue of the Curemother Prime. In an effort to disguise this fact, Rita does remotely detonate the *Carte Blanche*, and Juno, looking to the future, reopens Peter Nureyev's journal.

## Cast

* Joshua Ilon as Juno Steel
* Alexander Stravinski as Jet
* Chloe Cunha as Vespa
* Sarah Gazdowicz as Buddy
* Kate Jones as Rita
* Harley Takagi Kaner as Director W
* Unredited actor as Agent over Speaker

## References

1. ↑ Juno Steel and What Lies Beyond (Part 2)