[The following letter can be found on Sora's desk, with a small black book open next to it to show what appears to be a summary of events and interactions. Feel free to review both, though she'll be angry, bordering on indignant if you're found with the book. ((This letter is IC; there's a standard, AC-friendly list of activity below it.))]Professor Himesaki,
I hope the last month has treated you well; frankly, I'm very tired, after everything that's happened. I'd thought we'd have another relatively easy week or two, and
I took some time relaxing on the deck to get some sun... but it wasn't to be. Adventus attacked the White Chalice in force; they brought a monstrosity capable of disabling non-magical engines, and got one of their officers inside, orchestrating a kidnapping that took nearly two dozen pilots, including Eri. I was present for the attempt to repel the boarder, but was overpowered; the invader brought along automatons with stunning electric shocks at close range, rendering a large part of my combat ability useless, and a pilot was taken away from literally right in front of me. The boarder escaped, though not unharmed. I believe the attack was targeted on the Chalice itself, rather than any particular pilot or person aboard, with the possible exception of the captain.
After that travesty of a sortie, I was... disappointed in myself, to say the least, and
collapsed somewhere to vent my frustrations. Nanohana... well, she's due to send you her own report, so I won't comment on her actions, but she was in a bad mental state after the battle, and... I think I broke her, just a bit. It wouldn't have been the first time. But I'm sincerely hoping she can grow through the trials she faces, with her fellow pilots at her side. But, I'm getting sidetracked. Aside from Nanohana, I was visited by Kamille again; aside from concern for my well-being - I was not particularly discrete that day, I admit - he was also concerned about one Char Aznable's actions. You may have seen, or at least heard about, his rallying Neo Zeon to war against Adventus, immediately after the kidnapping; Kamille was quite concerned this would escalate into all-out war against the Earth Sphere, with Axis set to arrive in the next month. I'm frankly concerned that we're going to be in over our heads in short order, but that's not in the scope of this report.
The catalyst that started our rescue operation in earnest, however, was a conversation with COFFRET, left behind in Eri's capture. Between the two of us, we determined we could use COFFRET's ability to sense his partner as a sort of radar - establish a path to use as a sensor sweep, and once the AI found Eri, we had a defined area to search with relative certainty of finding the captives. This plan was presented to White Chalice command and approved in short order, to our relief.
...
And then Seiren arrived. I know I requested assistance, but I'm starting to wonder if that was the right idea. While I won't deny she's a strong pilot, her manner is causing friction among the team, and I'm not sure how to handle it. Seiren and Hana are constantly at odds, the former scolding the latter for her inexperience and failure, the latter unable to deny anything and slipping further into self-doubt. Of all people, Kamille is becoming part of the problem, too; I appear to have said too much regarding my honored superior to him, and he confronted her shortly after her arrival. The two argued, and eventually assigned me to be a judge of sorts in
a duel to determine which of them was the stronger. Seiren demonstrated Desu Ellen's excellent ranged multi-targeting ability just before Nanohana appeared, beyond all expectations, and implored the two to stop; while I was able to calm her down, Kamille broke down to Seiren when he thought we couldn't hear him. He's... got a lot of insecurities, most of which are from before my time, some of which are from before the Chalice started its mission. Regardless,
that set off Seiren, who
also revealed a number of her own issues. My opinion of Seiren certainly went up a few points that day; if I'd known even half of her story before, I wouldn't have been so hard on her. Kamille collapsed shortly after, and Nanohana and I took him to the infirmary.
Some time passed; as I calmed down from the initial events of the kidnapping, I trained myself to be more useful when the rescues came, and when the Divine Crusaders informed us the base had been located, I defended the Chalice from attack. While I did not fight any of Adventus' vaunted generals, I take pride in having at least done something. All of the captives were rescued, including Eri, but two of Adventus' generals were killed in the fighting. While it is acceptable to destroy enemies in war, I wish we hadn't had to.
Shortly after returning, Eri organized
a meeting of the Desu pilots; this turned out to be dance practice, as we haven't really trained as a team. I'd forgotten about our dancing being training for piloting as well as for our performances; while I got back into the swing of things easily enough, I'm not sure we're exactly ready for team operations. I've continued to practice alone, when I've had the time.
It was after one of these practice sessions that I came across Nanohana... ah, I'll just call her Hana from now on. It's a habit I've gotten into, and she seems to prefer it. In any event, I
found Hana in the arboretum, caring for the flowers. She reminds me a lot of you, Professor, if a bit rough around the edges; then again, she picked up her habits from you, so that's to be expected, I suppose. I think I scared her, when I arrived; she may resent me for suddenly arriving and being a better pilot than her without apparent effort, and I feel bad about that. We're all on the same team, we need to be able to work together, and I hate that I'm driving a wedge into things; it's something I'm working on.
Anyway, I commented that I wanted to help with something, and Hana suggested I help her with the flowers; I inadvertently commented I'd taken care of flowers before - back at the dojo, I was the person in charge of the grounds, which is probably why Apple and Pine had disapproving looks on their faces when they first arrived; I was depressed when the sunflowers I'd been taking care of withered - and she seemed to shrink into herself. I told her I wasn't great at gardening, and would love to learn from her; I was so relieved when she smiled again after that. I then found out the hard way her love of flowers; she gave me a truly staggering amount of information about the various blooms in the arboretum, and I ended up telling her about my past, before I came to Fairy Park. I think it surprised her, both what I'd been hiding and how easily I was living with it, but I believe we're closer now. And I'm thankful for that, honestly. We can use all the help we can get.
A day or two later, something else caught my attention: Julia, one of the other pilots, was
teaching Irgelion to anyone interested. I'd already known that Julia was one of my old friends from Irgel, Reilev, but I hadn't had a chance to talk to her yet; this just confirmed it. We joked for a bit about Alessandra's accusation that I was Irgelion when I'd first arrived, but she was still down about her inability to save Bertrand Herrera in a past battle; I wasn't sure what to say to that.
...And then things went totally downhill. I saw a broadcast from Haruka, that she was planning to leave when the business with Adventus was over, which was to be rather soon; on my way to go talk to her, I found her talking to Hana... or rather, caught the tail end of the conversation, which ended with
Haruka slamming a fist into Hana's gut before returning to her room. After gathering some information, I helped Hana back to her room; shortly after that, I
found Kamille unresponsive near the kitchen. A slap, which I regret, was enough to get him responsive again, but I found out he'd tried to confront Haruka... and failed. He's developing a complex about only being good at killing our enemies, and I wasn't sure how to respond to him... which ended up becoming moot as Alexei, LYNX formerly of Rayleonard, walked over to try and confront Kamille.
That ended up being a mistake; Kamille snapped worse, coming to the end of his rope, and before I knew it, I had a slight headache, and Alexei was collapsed against a wall, bleeding from... everywhere. I panicked, and... I could only come up with one option to bring Kamille back, and as much as it felt right to me, I still wonder how I thought it would do anything. I ran over to him and hugged him, told him we were here, that I was here for him. That was enough to get him calmed down almost immediately, and the pressure on my head stopped right away, replaced by a warm feeling I still remember now. That moment didn't last, though, as Julia came from out of a side hallway and found Alexei, then blamed us for it... Julia took him to the infirmary, leaving Kamille and I behind. He'd explained to me that he had an ability that, at the end of the day, is somewhat similar to the AIs in our Desu units: powerful emotions radiate out from him, and people with high sensitivity to such things can be in danger. I made a note to go visit Alexei once he'd had some time to settle in.
That visit was both more and less eventful than expected.
I found him with a thick cable coming out of his head, connected to a laptop. That laptop was itself connected to his mecha, designated the Wahrheit. Its own intelligence reported that Kamille's overload hadn't just injured Alexei; it'd
killed him outright. That still scares me; what's to prevent it from happening again? Or to me? But... I can't help anyone if I'm too afraid of what might happen to try. Anyway, the Wahrheit also noted that Alexei would be restored in about seventeen and a half hours. How he's coming back from death, even I'm not sure, but I don't want to know, I don't think. Kamille found me as I was about to leave; he'd already talked to Alexei, who was able to push his consciousness into the laptop somehow, and told Kamille he wasn't to blame. I tried to reassure him some more about his role on the ship... but I think my emotions are overriding my good sense, which should probably bother me more than it does. That, I'll summarize later.
I
returned after about eighteen hours to find that, indeed, the Wahrheit's efforts were successful, and Alexei was watching a feed from the current battle, code-named "ELIMINATION", in which the Chalice's fighters were taking on the last of Adventus' generals before bringing their attack to the base proper. Alexei waved aside my apologies for his condition, reminding me that as bad as I felt about letting him die in front of me, I still managed to help Kamille get himself together, and that was worth it, he'd said. I don't agree myself, but who am I to argue about killing a man, with the man I killed through my inaction? We watched the rest of the battle, myself worried out of my mind as Kamille and the other ran about the battlefield and were nearly killed several times. But at the end, the final blow was struck, and some time thereafter, Kamille returned; I think I about tackled him in my relief. Kamille and Alexei talked about the NEXT pilot's "death", and about the fact that Reilev is going to be a problem to deal with at some point, while I took a moment to get a hold of myself. We were all interrupted, however, by a voice coming from Alexei's laptop, something about wanting to hit something with his golf clubs. That voice was coming from the Captain, and Alexei, followed by Kamille, immediately charged out of the room to join in the fighted; I start to follow, but I tripped on a cable and smashed my head into the infirmary wall, apparently knocking me out, as there's a hole in my memory for the next hour or so.
Upon my return to consciousness, I left the infirmary and thought I saw Seiren headed down the halls to the hangar; having been a wreck and wanting to change, I returned to my room rather than following her. But after a little while, I heard faint music coming from the hangar, and
went to investigate. I found Seiren at the source, holding a music box with a haunting melody, which she treated almost with reverence. She explained it to me when I asked, both the tale of the melody, and how she'd gotten the music box itself; I hadn't known her past up to now, and I regret that. Maybe if we'd been closer, if I'd made more of an effort instead of just being scared of her, we wouldn't be having problems now. But instead, when she wrapped up her story and I tried to reach out to her, she shut me out, hard, told me I couldn't handle her pain. I... I admit it, I froze up. I've never been denied quite like that before, and I just left before I could say something to make it worse.
Expecting to have limited free time, I started work on this letter about a week ago; aside from that, however, I looked through my things and discovered my old uniform, and elected to wear it and see how it fit. Aside from still fitting just fine, I also found it changed perceptions of myself just a bit; perhaps more interestingly, I additionally discovered Kamille has a job on the Nirvana, Dita's all-female starship, and wears a maid costume as his uniform... which disturbs me a little. I also chatted with Werter about the importance of school in a post-Impact world, and with Laura about my past, and what that uniform means to me... and about the fact that I still regret not being able to save Fate, weeks ago. That's been eating at me, and I think it's affected my desire to pilot. If I can't protect a girl standing
right in front of me, how can I expect to protect anyone in a huge construct? I... think I'm getting better, though.
A couple of days passed. The ship was finally calming down from the fight with Adventus, and the... surprising non-issue thereafter. No major parties, just a few mellow incidents. Perhaps everyone was contemplating the destruction and death we'd had to purchase this victory with. In any case, one of the most notable incidents was that Haruka, former iDOL pilot before her unit Imber was stolen, announced and then followed through on leaving the Chalice to return home to her grandfather. Shortly after her departure, her colleague Miki announced that Imber was to be destroyed when next encountered. This was met with almost universal disapproval, ranging from arguments to outright shouting matches to physical contact. Among those getting into shouting matches was Hana, whom I later
found on the deck, depressed; a collection of bandages and bruises on her face, and her gripping her stomach again, really made it hit home how much abuse she's been taking from the other pilots since she got here, and I felt bad... though from what I'd heard, I had little sympathy for her, and as she told her story I had even less.
But I'd severely underestimated the other pilots' capacity for hazing and demoralization, as she just gave up on trying to defend herself, offered barbs for me to use. I wanted, so much, to be angry at her, to say something about her lack of tact or foresight, to scream at her for this happening again and again. But... I can't. Everyone's been breaking her will in turns, I'm not going to do it. If we all push her until she breaks, eventually we won't be able to put her together again, and she'll do the same thing Haruka's done: leave, and never come back, living as a shell of her former self. I will not let that happen, no matter what. If I have to stand before Seiren, before the entire Chalice... I'll protect her. I was too late to help Haruka, to help everyone before I arrived. I'm not going to let the people being hurt in front of me suffer.
I tried to reassure Hana, that she was important to us, that we needed her on the team. I think that was what she needed to hear; she hugged me, and finally smiled again. I feel bad that I have to keep doing this, that she's got such low self-esteem, but... if it's what needs to be done, I'll do it every time. It still doesn't sit well with me, though... All my depression kinda grew on me, and I spent about a day or two just being generally in a poor mood. I still
went out for my activities, but... I wasn't happy. I think I was a little too obvious, though; I worried Hana a bit, and Eri had to distract me with work, though I'm not certain she noticed, or if she did, she didn't call me on it. Kamille found me, too, and I had a bit of a chat with him, and I started to let out some of my insecurities... and then Seiren found us, with criticism of how we were letting Hana get away with failure, and comments on my insecurities I'd just mentioned to Kamille.
Both of us immediately bristled at the digs to Hana; I was willing to entertain her advice regarding myself, but I think I misheard her, thinking she was telling me to throw away myself, to become a pilot like her. I don't want that, I never will. I became a pilot to leave that life, of being a shell driving through life without meaning. I lost control of myself, became depressed, and eventually she... set me straight. I'm not going to complain about her actions there, but I think I needed some sense driven into me. I'll need some time, but sooner or later, I'll make her accept me. I won't give up until she accepts me as a pilot. As for Hana, we agreed that we need to coddle her a little less... I'm hoping she can stay strong until Seiren feels she's gotten the message.
That leaves the topic I wanted to report last: Kamille. Over the course of working with him through several incidents, I've noticed... something. I'm not sure what it is, entirely. After the incident with Alexei, when I comforted him... I've never felt anything like what I felt then. I don't mean to sound like a trashy romance novel character, but maybe I'm beginning to feel something for him? We've gotten into a number of situations together, and he's becoming comfortable with my presence, so we'll see what happens. I absolutely don't want to become one of those clingy female love interests in popular media; I
despise that image. But... we'll see.
I ordinarily would discuss Seiren's conduct, but aside from her treatment of Hana, which she's justified to Kamille and myself already, I cannot argue with the results. She's strong, and she can take command of a situation with surprising ease. I'm quickly remembering why she's got seniority over myself, who couldn't command her way out of an open hangar door; my charisma is great for solving problems amongst pilots, but Seiren is better at giving orders. I'll be the first to admit that.
I'm
departing on an off-ship journey for a while, so I wanted to get this sent before I left; Dita is taking myself, Hana, and possibly others on a quest of self-discovery she claims to have gone on before. Considering the empathic sense she seems to have and swears she didn't have before that, I'm inclined to believe her. While my own issues aren't particularly pronounced, I'll gladly take the chance to evaluate and deal with everything before things worsen.
I hope all is well at Fairy Park. Ideally the trainees aren't being too much of a hassle, now that Seiren and I are gone, and business should pick up now that one of the major threats to the world is defeated. I don't necessarily want to request additional help, particular with the stir Seiren's arrival caused, but... we're always in need of more pilots to keep our ship safe. If someone needs combat experience, or just wants something to shoot, there's no better place on Earth. Be safe, Professor.
Sora Myoudouin
[The letter is neatly stacked up, with an envelope addressed to the Professor sitting next to it, and a pen next to that. She intends to mail it just before she leaves, but with all the chaos normally inherent to the Chalice, who knows if that happened...]===
Activity list:
- 6 in
Slow day with Njall
- Mission: DOWNFALL (on inside route)
-
Shine 2 | I can't do anything...! (+5), and threads with Hana, Kamille, and COFFRET [Eri] for a total of 16
- 4 in First Note | The Ace Appears
with Seiren, and 18
with Kamille, Seiren, and Hana- 4 in
H@ppy Together - Dancing 101 with Eri
- 13 in
15th Bloom with Hana
- 6 in
Fifteenth Light with Julia
- 9 in A Penguin's Sadness
with Hana, and 8
with Kamille, Alexei, and Julia- 6 in Psychic whiplash
with Wahrheit [Alexei] and Kamille, and 6
with Alexei and Kamille- 5 in
Third Note | The Music Box with Seiren
-
Shine 3 | Calm Before the Storm (+5), and threads with Kamille, Werter, and Laura for a total of 17
- 9 in
16th Bloom with Hana (future-dated)
-
Shine 4 | Insecurities (+5), and threads with Hana, Eri, and Kamille (plus Seiren) in progress for at least 16
- 7 in
Walkabout with Dita
...for a total of... 149 and counting? TAGS FOR THE TAG GOD! DRAMA FOR THE DRAMALLAMA!
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srwug_alpha_rp), as there's no other way to express her canon - that's how it was "written", over the course of the game. References to "Project PreDestiny" refer to her canon.
