Petals of Titanium -- My Life as a Mecha Setting Bridge Bunny Quest

"Ensign North," J6 says after a moment's staring. There's a slightly quizzical tilt to her head, lending her a faintly surprised air in spite of the impassive stare her features otherwise form.

"Hello, Guardswoman," you say, addressing your tablet's camera. When a weighted pause threatens to settle in, you realise that you're expected to explain your call with no further small talk. "I'd like to talk to you," you say. "Face to face. Is there a good time?" You're in Alpha Sphere's transit hub, slowly making your way toward the waiting elevator. You have time for this call before having to leave. It's busier than Beta's, with a higher percentage of civilians than the unfinished habitat you're staying in. Your wispy, pale sundress draws a few admiring glances, but otherwise, you blend in with the crowd.

"Hm." She stares past you into the middle distance for a second, maybe two. "Yes," she says, finally. "Now would work."

You stop short, caught completely off guard. "Now?" You had assumed that, as the only Imperial Guard member you're aware of on Iapetus, her itinerary would be as busy as Daystar's own. You hadn't even expected her to pick up on this first call.

"Now," she says, nodding. If she's amused by your reaction, nothing in her icy-pale visage betrays it. Even her eyes are an almost glacial silver-grey. "I'm in Low Gravity Habitat Gamma. Unit B015. Off the main spindle."

"I'm headed up the spindle anyway," you say, coming around to the idea. "I'll see you soon, then?"

"Mm," J6 agrees. "Bye." Then she hangs up.


The low gravity habitats are comparatively small next to the spheres. Ovular, three dimensional shapes each tethered by a narrow shaft lined with lo-g agricultural modules. Strange spines along the length, irregularly spaced between the two poles. The inertially simulated gravity of these shorter tethers simply can't match that of Alpha or Beta Sphere, but it is more than microgravity. Enough to live with.

As you make your way slowly but surely up the elevator, it's like you're leaving one world and entering another. The elevator itself is little more than a handhold and leg straps, orientated in the direction gravity eventually will assert itself. Through its clear walls you see can a steady stream of green vegetation. The green is broken up by the occasionally flashing glimpse of a worker tending to the hydroponic gardens that help to feed Iapetus's growing population. It feels longer than it really is before you finally reach the bottom of Gamma Habitat's shallow false gravity well.

Rather than the genuinely open spaces of the spheres, or the broad, spacious shafts of the weightless Anchiale spaceport and surrounding spindle, this habitat has the efficiently claustrophobic feel of a much smaller station's habitation ring, although it lacks even the illusion of endlessness provided by those modest habitats' endless upward slope. You're instantly reminded of Quetzle Station, although this space is much better kept. Cleaner, with uniform parts and walls in a soothing beige above charcoal grey floor tiles.

You're on Level A, you swiftly realise, and are forced to backtrack slightly to the middle of Gamma's three levels. Level B looks much the same as the one above: Rows of narrow corridors with doors at regular intervals. Tired-eyed workers in various uniforms -- navy, Merchant Auxiliary, Anchiale security -- trudge past on their way home from a long shift. They give you curious glances, you with your cheerful sundress, reading a map on your naval-issue tablet, but let you pass without comment. Clearly this level, if not the whole habitat, is reserved for civil servants or naval personnel who work in the spaceport. You've seen such places before, even lived in one, briefly. Dirt cheap, if depressingly bland housing for government employees who can't afford elsewhere.

You have absolutely no idea why J6 would be housed here, of all places. Pilot or no, this location would be extremely inconvenient for shadowing the princess. The princess certainly can't be staying here, in this poky habitat that you'd only needed basic clearance to access.

Unit B015 is a door like all the others. You don't hesitate long before you press the buzzer next to the door. With very little pause, you're greeted in person with the same unemotive face from your brief video conversation.

"Hello, Ensign North," J6 says, stepping back to allow you to enter. It's slightly larger than your quarters in Beta Sphere, although notably without the benefit of windows or any kind of pleasant exterior. A bed rests against one wall, adjacent to a nightstand crowded with bottles of medication and supplements. The only other pieces of furniture in the room are a pair of unremarkable chairs and a workstation. From the kitchen alcove, a multitude of sparkling-eyed, chibi faces smile rapturously at you -- the meager counter space is dominated by a massive stack of Sugoi! brand variable-g-safe instant ramen pouches. The wastebin in the corner, you notice with a slight sinking feeling, is near to overflowing with empty packets of the same brand.

"Sit, if you want," J6 says, closing the door behind you. You gingerly retrieve one of the metal chairs, reorienting it easily with one hand in the light gravity. To your mild dismay, after you sit down J6 does not actually follow suit. Rather, she crosses her arms and leans against the wall nearest the door. In place of her full uniform, she's wearing only the pants and a nondescript tanktop. It shows off both her thin frame and the induction plates on her arms and sides, cold metal gleaming against skin or siloughted through thin fabric. Already, this encounter feels as uncomfortably revealing as the incident with the medication fabricator.

"Is everything alright?" you ask. Regardless of how little shows in her face, something about her bearing seems to speak of agitation or discomfort. She looks at you searchingly for a long moment before eventually responding:

"Her highness has been attending a series of meetings in Alpha Sphere, where she's being housed. We've been separated most of the time since we arrived."

You frown, confused. "Why?" you ask. "Aren't you her guard?"

There's the ghost of a twitch along one corner of her lip. An answering frown? It's impossible to tell. "Alpha Sphere has a simulated biosphere," she explains unhelpfully.

"And that's a problem for you?" you guess, not much less confused.

"I'm allergic to…" she briefly searches for an elegant way to summarise her problem, before giving up and saying: "... Many things. And too much uncontrolled space with live plantlife is dangerous for my immune system. So I have to stay here, where things are more controlled."

Your eyes track helplessly to the suite of medication, before you force your gaze back to her face. "You can't go into a biosphere at all?" you ask, voice quiet.

"If I went out into a real biosphere -- earth, or Mars -- I'd die," she confirms. "Anchiale's spheres probably aren't as bad as all that. I still wouldn't be a lot of use to her in that state."

Compared to Faiza's lack of comfort with open environments, and your simple lack of experience with shirt-sleeve planets, this bleak, mandatorily artificial existence seems infinitely worse. This goes beyond the mere inconvenience of having to take medication to survive. You're uncomfortably aware that, just as much as the induction plates grafted into her body, this is all something that was done to her. Somehow, in spite of her lethal competence and stony disposition, it's impossible to ignore how young she is. The magnitude of this hits you all at once, and without thinking, two words slip out: "That's awful."

Her head jerks back, blinking in obvious surprise. It's the most expressive response you've ever seen from her. As if the idea that this could be awful, rather than just the way things are, simply hadn't occurred to her. After a lengthy pause, she speaks up, almost awkward: "I'm a prototype," she says, by way of explanation. "I'm the only successful combat model. Successful enough to actually field, at least. Compared to most of the others. I'm lucky."

"You're not a model," you say, horror mounting, "you're a person.."

"I'm… both." Has her expression softened? Grown more complex? Stayed the same? She's impossibly difficult to read. "I was part of a project. A secret one, in Jupiter System, to create soldiers capable of direct neural interfacing with combat systems."

"Before the war?" your hands grip the edge of your tablet hard.

"Yes," she says.

"You must have been a child!"

"Yes," she says, just as easily. "We all were. Most of us didn't survive the first year. I'm lucky." She repeats this, as if to sway you… or assuage your revulsion. As if to make you feel better, somehow.

"Who would… whose project was this?" You have a sickening feeling you already know.

She shrugs, the gesture less lithe than usual. She's even more agitated than before, even if she's uncommonly good at hiding it. "The Empire says criminals. The Jovians say the Empire. The Navy. The SRI." Abruptly, she turns and walks into the kitchen, taking a ramen pouch off the top of the pile. "The money came from somewhere, though." She pries open the seal on the pouch, and inserts the sink's faucet into it, filling the pouch up to the prescribed level. "I'm not going to talk about this anymore."

"You're… what?" The statement had been utterly casual, and completely without warning.

"I'm not," she says, twisting the bottom of the pouch to begin its internal heating routine. It's a civilian version of naval rations, in that way, although moderately closer to real food. "I'm done."

"That's… if that's what you'd prefer," you say, still a little sick to your stomach, imagining someone performing the kind of experiments and procedures that could produce someone like the Guardswoman on a girl that young. On multiple children that young. It's not as though you haven't heard the rumours. Everyone has -- of unspeakably unethical experiments out of Jupiter, performed on human subjects. Political dissidents or children stolen or bought from somewhere, depending on who tells the rumour. There is no consistency to them, in scope or in the precise nature of what was being attempted. There are always a few facts in common, however: The subjects had been subjected to horrible pain and suffering. That failed subjects were discarded like trash. And that the Empire had been involved in it all.

The Empire, of course, stridently denied almost all of this at the time. Simultaneously, the larger political and military apparatus had been so repulsed by whatever had happened there that it had sparked the reform agenda that in turn had sparked the civil war when the then prince had disagreed. It would have been easy, comforting, to blame the founders of the Holy Empire, who had expressly opposed those reforms in such a violent manner. Looking at J6, however, you know that that would be on some level dishonest. The Jovians certainly think so. The incident, whatever it truly had been, was enough to turn decades of discontent into scattered, open rebellion around the larger gas giant with an increasingly high body count all the time. They are rebelling against the Holy Empire now, of course, but it hadn't started that way.

"You're too young," your mother's voice echoes unbidden in your head, "You never saw how bad things used to be, before the Civil War." Maybe this is true in more than one way.

J6 looks between her heating ramen pouch and you, and belatedly asks: "Would you like one?"

"Thank you," you say, agreeing without really thinking. And in a moment, you have a rapidly heating pouch of instant soup sitting on your lap at well. The feeling is comforting, at least. There's an extended silence, broken only by the occasional crinkle from either package as they heat their contents. The chibi face from your pouch stares up at you, eyes dead with inhuman delight. One last question dredges its way up out of your mouth: "What was your name, really?"

"My name is really J6," she replies, almost gently. Then she opens her ramen pouch, and snaps off the attached chopsticks (for in-gravity use only!). "Why did you come here, Ensign?"

Slowly, mechanically, your hands follow suit. Before you answer, you find yourself using the chopsticks to bring the mushy 'egg' noodles to your mouth. Overall, it's not half as bad as it looks -- it's no wonder she seems to like this brand. "I need a favour," you admit.

"Oh, you needed something from me." She's not hurt. If anything, the way she says it conveys an almost relieved sense of clarity. You're here to ask her to do something for you, not simply to try to enjoy her company while hashing out her traumatic past. As if contextualising your interactions as transactional is easier to process than trying to come to terms with a different sort of relationship.

In spite of her relief -- perhaps because of it -- you feel a stab of inescapable guilt in the pit of your stomach. "I'm still glad we could talk," you clarify.

"Okay." She's silent apart from the one word response, staring at you expectantly.

You take a final, bracing slurp of your soup, before launching into an explanation of why, precisely, you're here. She listens intently, without visible reaction as you lay everything out. There's a further contemplative silence after you finish, before she finally breaks it. "You have your work with you?" she nods to your tablet.

"Yes," you confirm. You're not sure why, at this point, you expected more of a response than that.

"Good. We can start now."

"Now?"

She nods. "Now. I'm free. Do you have anywhere to be?"

"I don't," you admit. You watch as J6 moves over to the workstation, retrieving a heavy duty adaptor cable and the room's other chair, eventually placing the two of you in a seating arrangement not entirely dissimilar to the one you were in when you spoke with Faiza.

"Show me what you're working on." It's a request, not a command, and you navigate to the secure folders on your tablet that the project is located on.

"How much do you know about obsolete naval code?" you ask.

She shrugs. "Next to nothing. You'll have to explain to me what I'm looking for."

You glance at her sidelong. The different vantage point doesn't reveal anything illuminating. "Are you a fast learner?"

She nods. "Generally. We have time."

You sigh. "Yes, we have time. So, what we actually need to do--"


The two of you are jolted out of your work by the sound of J6's workstation chiming loudly. Her eyes, glazed over, abruptly refocus, and she reaches a hand up to grip the adaptor cord connecting her temple-induction plate to your tablet. She waits a few moment to sever the connection properly before she wrenches the magnetic contact away from her cybernetics, and attempts to stand up quickly. So quickly, in fact, that she's seemingly struck by a wave of dizziness, and almost topples over. You set your tablet down and move over to the workstation, easily locating the flashing "answer" button before stepping out of the way.

You've been working for hours and have made shocking amounts of progress, between your expertise and J6's raw data processing abilities. You're so much closer to actually being able to translate the content of the encoded message that you're almost kicking yourself for not seeking out the Guardswoman's help sooner.

You watch her stagger over to the camera's path and force herself to straighten, just in time for the screen to fill with the face of none other than Princess Daystar. Instead of the serene expression you've seen from her in public, here in this presumed-private transmission to her closest subordinate, the unnaturally beautiful face of the royal is worked up into a weary pout. "Ugh, Jayceeee," she moans. It takes you a few baffled moments before you work out that 'Jaycee' means 'J6'. "This day is never going to end."

"Station time has a day set to 24 Earth Standard hours," J6 reasons. "You'll be done soon."

Daystar makes a scoffing sound. "You know what I mean."

"I do," J6 agrees. "Unfortunate that I can't be bored with you today, your highness."

She laughs, although J6 doesn't even crack a smile. "You know, that actually would make things a little better. Sol, it's good to be able to talk to someone normally. Without Lord Secretary Song talking my ear off about Saturnian 'subversives'" The eye roll she gives at this is decidedly not one you feel Princess Daystar would give in mixed company.

You feel immediately awkward. You aren't merely listening in on an official call from the Princess, you're listening in on a private stress relief message. Amid your mortification, you can't help but take a brief instant to reflect on J6's position, and her relationship to the princess. A borderline stable, experimental pilot. The product of a nightmare series of experiments that the Empire as a whole deeply regretted the existence of -- a pilot whose completely stoic non-reactions bordered on the unnerving. Was this the kind of woman who the Imperial Guard would scramble to hire on? You think not. This means that, more than likely, J6 has her current position on the weight of Princess Daystar desiring her in it.

The more cynical view of this, of course, was a powerful member of the royal family further taking advantage of a traumatised girl. Putting her in a uniform, handing her an incredibly deadly mecha, asking her to fight and kill and die for her sake. Looking at the fond smile the princess is giving J6 through the screen, however, you prefer to think differently: That Daystar had seen a girl with no family, no friends, no standing whatsoever, and gave her a place by her side.

You clear your throat quietly, signalling J6's attention. You regret interrupting the conversation slightly less than you'd regret continuing to stay in the room while it goes on. J6 looks up, having momentarily forgotten your presence, and the princess is able to see you as well as the workstation's camera pans over to the location of the noise you produced.

"Oh." Daystar seems more surprised than offended by your presence. Outright baffled, in fact -- evidently it hadn't even remotely occurred to her that J6 might ever have a guest over for any reason.

"This is Ensign North, your highness," J6 says, mercifully. "She serves on the Titanium Rose as a scans officer. She's here requesting my help with a problem she had."

"I see," Daystar says. It's as though she's flipped a magic switch, fatigue melting away and the dignified benevolence of her public face snapping back into place. The way she says 'I see', you suspect the information will be being shared with her later. If only out of curiosity at this stage, rather than suspicion. "I am, of course, pleased to meet any officer from the Rose after everything we've been through together." She eyes your sundress with amusement, incongruous with the formal salute you've automatically snapped to. "I see you've been enjoying your shore leave."

"Yes, your highness," you agree, attempting to keep your composure in these highly irregular circumstances. "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance." Quite possibly, you should have curtsied, what with the dress. You've really spent too much time in uniform lately.

"I appreciate you keeping Jaycee occupied," the princess informs you. "Left to her own devices, she spends all her time making adjustments to her unit and moping around her quarters." J6 shugs, not bothering to contradict this characterisation.

"She has been a tremendous help to me," you say, scooping up your tablet from your vacated chair and closing out the folders you'd been using with J6.

"She usually is," agrees Daystar, a little fondly.


You let out an explosive breath back out in the corridor, still clutching your tablet to your chest. The long minutes it took before you could politely extricate yourself from the situation in order to leave J6 and Daystar to their conversation were as excruciating for the princess as they were for you, you suspect. There had been genuine gratitude in her eyes at your early goodbye. J6's gaze had been as blank as ever, but you hope she also appreciated the gesture.

Even if your session was cut short, the Guardswoman has materially advanced your efforts, and you can feel good about the way you spent your time today. Both for those reasons and for the simple fact of keeping her company. With no further reason to stay in the habitat, you retrace your steps back to the lift so that you can finally make the trip back down to Beta Sphere.

You're halfway there when you feel the telltale buzz of a call notification against your chest. You spend several long, confused moments staring at the blank surface of your tablet until you realise with a start that the buzzing is coming from between your breasts. Slowly, almost fearfully, you tuck the tablet back under one arm, hook the cord around your neck with a free finger, and lift the tiny, black box that you've worn around your neck every day for well over a decade up into the light. It's vibrating rhythmically, its surface pulsating a pleasant green.

You stare at it, dumbfounded, for another long moment. What could have set it off? Random interference? Had the device finally broken, after all this time? It's an exceptionally crude communication device, suitable to give to a young child without worry about her breaking it or destroying it. And it had only ever been attuned to two numbers: Your mother's old ID, long since abandoned, and the matching unit, carried by your sister. Green was her colour.

You know it's going to be some sort of mistake, even as you press the cube to your tablet and slip an earpiece on. It's so old you're not even sure if it's going to synch up, despite having been touted as universally compatible with all comm systems. The background buzz of a low quality audio call crackles to life through the speakers and is, at first, all that breaks the silence.

"Hello?" you ask, voice thick with trepidation. The halls of the habitat are deserted compared to earlier, and your voice echoes faintly against the hard surfaces around you. You hear a sharp intake of breath on the other side of the call. "Hello?" you repeat.

Finally, a voice speaks, impossible to truly identify after a decade apart, and across such a poor quality connection: "Amani?" Nonetheless, somehow you know.

"... Speaking," you reply, attempting wryness. Your voice comes out too shaky and fragile to really carry it forward. Your surroundings blur together until your whole world is wrapped up in the two devices, and the audiofeed in your ears.

There's an explosive release of breath from the caller, as if they had been holding it, waiting in fear of a negative response. "I didn't think… I never thought you'd really pick up," the voice says, so thick with emotion that she's stumbling over her words. She'd always been like that, growing up. She could play cool and collected until something really got under her skin. You feel your eyes pickle, and irritably rub at the moisture against your nonexistent sleeve.

"Mosi." It's not a question. By this point, you're certain. You still need to hear her say it.

"Yes."

Abruptly, you feel your legs go weak, and you're forced to half collapse against the wall beside you, breath suddenly ragged as your composure cracks into a thousand pieces.

"Amani? Are you alright? Amani!" the voice on the other end of the call sounds genuinely panicked at what, to her, must have just been a metallic clang and then silence. It's still several long moments before you can gather yourself enough to reassure her.

"I'm… It's… I'm…" you heave in a few breathes, squeezing your eyes shut, deeply glad that no one is here to see this. "I'm… I thought you were dead!"

"I'm not."

"We thought you were dead! The Holy Empire, they… the families of other loyalists, they… they shot father, Mosi, we thought you were dead!"

"I'm not! I'm fine. I'm fine! I--" the voice cuts off briefly, as if overcome. "I'm trying not to… I have to see you. Where are you? You must be on Anchiale."

"How did you even get here?" you ask. "You couldn't have come on the refugee ships -- mother would have heard. She checked!"

"I'll…" this pause is longer, more deliberate, pregnant with possibilities. "I can explain later, once I've seen you. I have to see you, I have to… I can come meet you somewhere, I think. No, I definitely can. I'll come meet you. Where are you?"

"I'm in Gamma Habitat," you say. "I was… I'm on my way down now."

"Oh, good," she says, relieved. "That's not far. Meet me in… can you get to Theta habitat?" Theta. You recall enough about the station layout to know that it's another low gravity habitat, almost directly opposite Gamma.

"Of course," you say. "I can go there now."

"Good," she says. "Good. I'll see you there. I'll see you soon" Then the line goes dead.

You only spare yourself a moment's stunned silence, staring down at the now-inactive cube synched to your tablet. Then you bust into life, nearly running as you make your way to the elevator. Your chest feels as though it might burst with a mingled shock, disbelief, and an almost painful joy that your sister is alive. Somehow, she's alive. Whatever that somehow is, she doesn't want to say, but that's maybe not surprising. There are people smuggling operations in and out of Saturn, albeit massively expensive and dangerous ones. Was that how she'd spent the past ten years since surviving the war? Struggling and scrounging and fighting to get passage here, back to you and your mother, back to her family? Her family who had already given her up for dead?

You need to see her. Once you see her, it will really feel true. As you ascend back to the central spindle, you can barely hold yourself still. You're moving toward your goal, obviously, but not actively enough for your tastes as you're forced to stand still to avoid setting off the lift sensors that might bring things to a grinding halt while someone assures you aren't having a seizure. Your knee throbs painfully where it struck the wall earlier. You hadn't noticed in the heat of the moment. It's nothing serious, but it still hurts.

It's a long trip down, and you've just gotten huge news. Do you call someone to tell them? To just talk to someone about all this?

[ ] You don't tell anyone yet.

This is a family matter.

[ ] You call Anja.

She's your closest friend, talking to her will help.

[ ] You call Gloriana.

It's still early days for whatever you have, but you want to talk to her.

[ ] You leave a message for J6 to see when she's done talking to the princess.

She's right here, and she's a calm, analytical presence.

(No, you may not write in "I call THE POLICE and have them arrest Mosi" or anything similar : p This is your sister who you'd given up for dead, not an enemy infiltrator trying to overthrow your government.)