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

"North. Amani, slow down. You're not making any sense."

Anja's voice is concerned but measured, trying not to get you any more worked up than you already are. "I just got the message," you say. "The call. You remember the comm box I carry? On that. From Mosi."

There's a perceptible pause as Anja tries to process this. "Mosi," she says, slowly.

"Yes," you confirm. "My sister."

"Your dead sister?" Anja asks, incredulous.

"Yes, that one! But she's not dead, she just called, and I'm… it's…"

"Just breathe, North. Can you do that for me?

Breathe. Breathing is good. You close your eyes, blocking out the repetitive surroundings in the elevator shaft as you make your way back down to the spindle. Her presence, even over an audio call, is soothing. You're abruptly glad you called. "Okay. Yes," you say, after a long moment. "I'm… I'm fine. Thank you."

"Good. I'm not used to hearing you... she pauses for a little too long, before settling on the diplomatic, "... uncomposed. You're really sure it was her, then? You seemed like you knew she was dead."

"We never got a confirmation," you say. "Just, they killed the families of a lot of loyalists. Especially ones like father. After they shot him, we thought… we thought they must have gotten rid of her too." A young girl, not even a full cadet. More useful to the burgeoning Holy Empire, surely, as an example than anything else. Certainly less useful than your father had been.

"Zealot fucks," Anja mutters. Through your preoccupied haze you dimly notice an acid hate in her voice that she hasn't always displayed for the enemy. It hasn't been very long since she lost the next closest thing to a sibling herself. "You're sure this is her, though?" she repeats after a second or two of silent fuming.

"I know it is," you say.

"It has been ten years," she cautions. "More."

"No one else would be able to contact me over this thing," you say, somewhat more logically. You can feel the effects of gravity leaving your body, your perception switching over to flying forward, face first rather than being pulled upward. "It has to be her."

"Point," she concedes. There's still a dubious, reticent tone to her voice. You suppose, from an outside perspective, that's somewhat justified. "Be careful, though. Even if it is her… like I said, it's been ten years. You don't know how she even got here, or what she had to do to stay alive. People change, North."

"This is my sister, Anja," you tell her. "It's going to be fine."

Anja sighs slightly, equal parts affectionate and exasperated. "Alright," she says. It's more acceptance than agreement. "Listen, you still seem pretty shaken up by this -- do you need me there?"

The offer surprises you. The trip from Beta Sphere to Theta Habitat isn't nothing, especially if Anja had other plans for her day. And you know that Anja in particular has no love for transitioning between gravity and zero-g and back again so many times in such fast succession. It's not something she's offering lightly, and it's a little touching. As you respond, you can already feel the elevator begin to slow, indicating that you're almost at your location. "I… would like that," you admit. She won't get there so soon that you won't get some time alone with Mosi, but the idea of some familiar support is too good to pass up.

"Good," she says. "I'll be up as soon as I can."


Ensign Anja Li stares down at the earpiece she's just removed like it has the answers to this weird fucking situation. With the call ended, the silence of her cramped quarters seems almost deafening. North isn't stupid, nor is she careless under normal circumstances. She's smart, methodical, guarded. Anja won't even call her sheltered, really. No one who lost so much at such a young age, who was old enough to remember the hellish conditions aboard the sort of refugee ship that North came to Saturn on, can really be considered sheltered. But through her upbringing, she's been shielded from the casual selfishness that people without opportunities are driven to, from the realities of common criminality and life on the grey fringes of the Empire. She doesn't understand that blood relation, even a shared past, isn't enough to guarantee the kind of family bond that North assumes of this strange woman she last knew as a teenage student.

It's good that she called Anja, really. Anja's background doesn't boast many advantages over Amani's, but being primed to mistrust at the right moments is one of the exceptions. It's understandable that North might lose her head under these conditions, but that is why she needs someone like Anja, just now. Anja considers, for a moment, how she'd feel if she got a call from Hiro, miraculously claiming to have escaped death… ten years after the fact. How would she even begin to respond to that?

"Fuck you for not calling sooner," she mutters to herself, lips twisting up into a smile tinged with fresh grief.

North's lack of experience aside, this is all too much coincidence. Amani's long lost sister, last known to be not only in enemy territory, but in enemy hands? Here now, right when the emperor-worshipping shitbirds were finally trying to strip the old empire's carcass clean? Anja believes in coincidence, but not to the point of foolishness.

She turns to face a blank stretch of wall, fingers going to the small keypad set there. She bypasses the numbers entirely to scan her thumb on the gel pad beneath. Anja, humble origins aside, is an officer of the empire -- a junior one, but an officer all the same -- and that comes with certain perks. Weapons control in the Empire at large is exceedingly tight. Possession of an unauthorised, easily concealed weapon, even a dagger or a stun-glove, is a crime that can lead to imprisonment depending on the severity of the infraction. In the case of firearms, the 'can' leaves the equation. Keeping the peace and maintaining public safety aside, firearms are generally considered to be a terrible idea inside a pressurised environment. Only in the same way that war in space is already a terrible idea, though. Some things are a necessary evil.

Firearms are still very much controlled among the naval rank and file, and the more practically minded administrators in the military are very much of the mind that this should extend to everyone. Anja has to admit, they're probably right. But the truth of the matter is, every institution in the Empire has to bend before the archaic might of the aristocratic elites who run it. And so, to keep the spoiled nobles who can't go without their heirloom, heavily customised family sidearms pleased, the navy bends as well. It's not an exception that is really meant for someone like Anja, but in a real way nothing in the navy is meant for someone like Anja. That hasn't stopped her from taking advantage of as much of it as she can.

North thought it was silly of her to have gone to the trouble of advanced certification far beyond the short stint on the range that officers in her specialty required. To have gone through the trouble, the expense, to acquire and register an approved model of sidearm, to have endured dubious looks from various supply officers in the process. Anja, however, likes to be prepared.

The handgun is light, low capacity and absolute shit at any kind of a range, but that's fine. Onboard most ships or stations, wide-open spaces are the exception rather than the rule and Anja cannot imagine any circumstance under which she'd be firing anything but the low penetration frangibles mandated by the navy. They're useless at any kind of a range as well, in addition to being as good against body armour as a stern glare, but it's probably an acceptable trade off to avoid holing the station and venting the atmosphere into space.

Anja only hesitates a short while before pulling the weapon out and checking it before carefully loading it. She doesn't plan on shooting anyone, obviously. But something about this entire situation bothers her and she can't trust North right now to be entirely impartial.

Just in case.


On the outside, Theta habitat is much like any other of Anchiale's low-g additions. Rather than housing residential or laboratory space, however, Theta is primarily set aside for recreation and exercise, a dense packet of gyms and game halls, all wrapped around a narrow atrium that passes for a courtyard.

In Mosi's estimation, it's a sad little place. There's actual headroom, the walls souring up to the reinforced-glass dome of the ceiling, and pleasant seating. But the line of identical trees running down the middle of it are artificial. The place has the vaguely desperate vibe of a deeply artificial space trying and failing to look natural. Maybe that's why no one else seems to be here, although it's also at an awkward time of day. One station shift at work, another sleeping. The only other person present is an old man sitting at the far end of the atrium from Mosi, paperwork on several screens sprawled out over the entirety of a four-person table. He seems to have nodded off at some point, and is in the process of using his work as a pillow.

Privacy is fine with Mosi. And the corner of the atrium she's sitting in does allow that. It's a video deadzone, helpfully located for her by the leaked SRI report provided to them by the mysterious Anchiale spy has leaked to them. Everytime Mosi reads it, clicking through countess admonishments of "STRICT CONFIDENTIALITY", "STATE LEVEL SECURITY" and "DISSEMINATION AN ACT OF TREASON UNDER--" never fails to impart a twinge of sympathy for the SRI operative who had to painstakingly write it. Considering that the people M. Owusu had handed the report to either didn't take the warnings at all seriously… or had never been on his side to begin with. It would be easy to take instances like this and assume that the enemy is, as a whole, stupid. Mosi makes very certain to remember that this is too dangerous a mindset to let herself fall into.

Lieutenant-Commander Roth will, of course, be furious if he finds out about Mosi's unannounced excursion. She's jeopardising the mission. Even if nothing bad comes of this, she's certainly jeopardising her chances of her career benefiting from the venture. The kind of performance report Commander Green had had in mind when he'd recommended her for the infiltration would ideally not contain the phrase "went haring off for personal reasons." This was a terrible idea on any kind of an objective level. Even Ensign Kim of all people, who had been present when Mosi's had almost inadvertently made the call to Amani, had told her as much.

"Lieutenant, the LC is not going to like this," she'd said, a note of caution in her voice that seemed almost foreign, coming from Kim. Her dark eyes had regarded Mosi with something like real concern, unearned by Mosi's brusque treatment of her up to this point.

Mosi would not have placed the call with Kim present, given a conscious choice. But she'd noticed the blinking light. The one that indicated a connected device within range, and had had no actual expectation that her sister's voice would come out of the other end. Kim had stared silently with unusual politeness throughout the entire affair, only breaking her silence after Mosi had declared her intent to leave for Theta and hung the call.

"Fine. Fine. I can cover for you, if anyone asks," Kim had finally said, when it was clear Mosi was not to be dissuaded. "Please be careful, Lieutenant North." This is where things have come to -- Mosi is relying on Ensign Kim of all people.

All thoughts of Ensign Sojin Kim leave Mosi's mind then, as a dark, elegant young woman passed through the double emergency hatches to enter the atrium. The natural sense of poise evident in her movements is hindered only by the tentative air that hangs over her like a borrowed coat -- ill fitting and of a style that doesn't suit her. Entirely unlike the actual dress she's wearing, which hangs off her willowy frame in a way that it never would for Mosi. She looks shockingly, painfully like both of Mosi's parents. Her mother's eyes and build, her father's complexion and pleasant features. Mosi feels as though she's looking at two people at once -- the grown woman standing on the far side of the atrium superimposed with the decade old ghost of a little girl with braided hair and tears in her eyes. She looks… clean. Safe. An innocent civilian girl, removed from the horrors of war. At least for a little while longer.

"Amani?" Mosi doesn't remember consciously speaking the name anymore than she remembers standing up. But the girl freezes in place, head turning until she locks eyes with Mosi. They stay like that for an agonisingly long moment, before the girl finally begins to walk forward, step by step like she's in a daze. She comes to an almost bewildered halt directly in front of Mosi. The realisation that she's actually taller than Mosi lands like a blow… albeit one softened by a sense of mounting relief.

Without warning, the girl throws herself at Mosi, and pulls her into a hug so tight that it hurts. Mosi doesn't care, and simply returns it. Her life for the past ten years seems to flash before her eyes -- the cruelty and abuse as a student, taking savage blows as punishment for her mother's crimes. The tentative, fragile feeling of the career that Commander Green helped her build despite that. The comforting mask of blind devotion, and the constantly looming realisation that she's always only one slipup away from being precisely back where she started. For the first and likely only time, Mosi feels like she's finally regained some small piece of the life she had before all that.

Let Roth scream himself bloody and have her demoted. At that moment, she doesn't care.


You pull away from Mosi, your state of dazed shock slowly, finally giving way to a bone-deep relief. She's here, it's actually real, and you feel like you can think straight again for the first time since you got that call. There's so many things you want to say, to tell her and above all to ask that you don't know where to start. She beats you to it.

"It's silly," she says, "but in all this time, I never actually imagined you growing up." Her voice has retained its military-academy polish. A featureless, clipped Imperial accent completely uncoloured by regional quirks. Past the relief in her eyes mirroring your own, she's looking at you with an almost dismayed surprise. You suppose she isn't joking.

You think of everything that's happened to you since she saw you last. Losing father, losing her. The terror of the evacuation. The dark, claustrophobic horror of the long months to even get to Saturn on the refugee ship, low on everything from space to supplies to hope. The gulf of years between you seems to open up before you eyes, although you doubt she can see it. "I couldn't exactly help growing up," you say, with the barest trace of an ironic lilt to your voice.

She laughs at that, smiling in a familiar, ever-so-slightly crooked way. "No," she says. "I don't suppose you could." You're not sure she gets the subtext. Maybe that's good.

You take a good look at her, then. Past the initial, deliriously happy recognition, she's also changed in ways you never imagined her. She's harder than before, leaner in a way that doesn't simply come from experience and discipline, but from, you're sure, privation and witnessing things that can't be taken back. It's a look you're used to seeing from people her age, but it makes a sad correction to the mental image you'd been forming. She's a hair shorter than you now, you're amused to note, athletically thin compared to your softer, more willowy figure and with a complexion that's still virtually identical to your mother's. She has her hair in a practical style that's popular both in the navy and with anyone who has to regularly shove a helmet onto their head -- just short enough not to require ties or knots. This last tells you something, but not much.

"Mother is going to be so happy," you say, finally, returning her smile.

Shockingly, her own smile dies. Slowly, like it's being strangled. "Yeah," she says, without conviction, and you feel a strange knot in your stomach. That gulf of years again. "She's not here, right?"

"Out on patrol," you agree. Doesn't she want to see her mother? The images you'd had in your head -- of presenting Dame Nalah with her eldest daughter miraculously returned to you both -- fade away in light of this new uncertainty. You hesitate, not sure what to say. "Mosi," you begin, taking in a deep breath, "wherever you've been… whatever you've had to do, it's okay. You're still my sister, and you're still her daughter. She'll want to see you, and she'll help you. She'll get your papers in order if you… if you're here… irregularly." At the look on her face, you find your words faltering near the end. "Whatever it is, she won't care," you try to stress.

She looks at you with a strangely blank certainty. A sort of horrible irony in her voice as she says, quietly, "I very much doubt that." The rest of her face might be neutral, but there's something behind her eyes you don't like. Something dark, almost menacing.

You're afraid, suddenly, of pushing too hard. Afraid that if you do so, the vision of your sister in front of you will shatter like glass, or simply run away from you. And you know, somehow, that if that happens this may well be the last you ever see of her. Whatever strange world she has emerged from, she'll go back to it and never return. "Okay," you whisper, quietly. There's a long stretch of silence, before you finally push yourself to add more. "Let's sit down," you suggest, gesturing to the table she'd been sitting at before she spotted you. "Let's just talk."

She relaxes, and follows suit. "Talk sounds good," she agrees, sitting across from you. She forces her hands to relax, placing them deliberately on the table in front of her.

In spite of this new doubt you feel, talk does seem extremely good to you as well. You smile at her. "Where do you want to begin?"


In this conversation, what does Mosi learn, explicitly told to her or inferred, that you wouldn't tell an enemy? You must pick two. Votes will be counted in sets:

[ ] Information about the HIMS Titanium Rose, her crew and normal mecha compliment

[ ] Knowledge of you working on Lieutenant-Commander Owusu's secret project

[ ] Iapetus being poorly prepared for an attack, what Gloriana told you about the defence platforms

[ ] Information about your mother, what she flies, what her unit is, when she'll be back

[ ] That you might be seeing a countess, specific information about Gloriana as a person/pilot