~February 6th, 140 AH~
~Joint Base Akra, Kurator Corps HQ, Colonel Shiranui’s office~
A day after she’d been dressed down by her gentle diminutive mother, Asena was about to be built back up by her stern giant of a father.
Colonel Yuito Shiranui sat across from her at his desk, upon which were scattered Asena’s written reports, as well as Yuito’s own notes on the mission thus far. He’d donned bifocal glasses for the occasion, better to squint at the overabundance of data that had spilled out from the previous session.
“And after all this, the subject still shows no sign of re-attuning to the Nexus,” Yuito stated rather than asked.
“No, sir,” Asena concurred, then considered for a moment before adding, “If anything, the previous session may have set him back on that front. He’d re-encoded the [EVOKED] memory fragments, but was greatly distressed in doing so. He’s normally eager to keep the channel open for as long as possible, except last time, where he was the first to disengage.”
Yuito put down the documents and leaned back in his chair. He took off the bifocals, rubbing the bridge of his nose as he did. Asena noted that her father looked more exhausted than ever, despite a day’s pause in the proceedings.
“Combat is inherent to the nature of a Reiter’s Nexus attunement,” he said in a strangely musing tone, as if he might be formulating his thoughts as he spoke, “and yet, the memories—and prospect—of combat seem to be the very things driving our subject away from the Nexus. A conundrum, to be sure. One we must—”
He trailed off, and Asena waited for him to finish his thought. When no such conclusion seemed to be forthcoming, she ventured, “Sir… must we?”
The Colonel looked up at his daughter with heavily creased eyes. Even as Asena cowered under his gaze, Yuito said, with just the hint of impatience, “If you have something to say, say it, Corporal. You needn’t beat around the bush.”
Asena sucked in a steadying breath, then let it all out before she could lose her nerve, “Must we continue with the mission? I recognize Ze—Lieutenant Athelstan’s remarkable contributions to the war effort. I understand he may be difficult to replace, but he isn’t the first—and certainly won’t be the last—young Reiter whose services we lost far too soon. I need not remind… your own son—”
“Get to the point, Corporal.”
“I only wonder if time and resources couldn’t be better directed toward re-training the subject in a different capacity. Another role he could take on that doesn’t require Nexus attunement—that doesn’t require piloting an Eidolon. Somewhere else he might belong, where he could be most productive. Happiest. He—”
Yuito Shiranui had started to laugh then, and Asena felt a chill run down her spine. His wasn’t the full-throated belly laugh of bolder men, but was the rhythmic expression of his contempt and authority—articulate and calculating, even in laughter.
“Somewhere else he might belong?” Yuito scoffed. “Somewhere other than a battlefield, you mean? Need I remind you, Corporal Shiranui, of the most basic principles of Seherschaft?”
Asena grew hot with humiliation, deeply regretful that she’d gone down this path at all. All she wanted to do now was drop the subject and get on with her day. “No sir, I—”
“Recite them.”
“Sir?”
“Recite the Seven Fundamental Tenets of Seherschaft.”
Now anger joined humiliation. What was she, an unruly schoolgirl made to write lines on a chalkboard? But there was no arguing with Father in his current state. She didn’t bother to hide a sigh before she obeyed:
1. A Seher sees into the Nexus and calls forth the memories contained therein.
2. Sehers manifest through five differentiations, one for each distinct domain of memories.
3. The Gaertner sees into the domain of LIFE, and calls forth memories of growth and construction.
4. The Jaeger sees into the domain of SPIRIT, and calls forth memories of energy and propagation.
5. The Panzer sees into the domain of BODY, and calls forth memories of survival and resilience.
6. The Kurator sees into the domain of MIND, and calls forth memories of memory itself.
7. And the Reiter sees into the domain of—
“WAR.”
Yuito finished off the passage for her, having clearly waited for the opportunity to make his point. Asena let out another audible sigh before clamming up, more than happy to let her father have his moment.
“The Reiter sees into the domain of WAR,” Yuito reiterated, “and calls forth memories of destruction and domination. The destruction of our enemies, and domination over this planet that is ours by right.”
Silence fell between them. Yuito looked up at his daughter with heavily creased eyes, and this time, Asena refused to cower or hang her head in shame. He could sling his overwrought theatrics all he liked. It didn’t change the real person Zelen Athelstan was—or at least had been—divorced from Reiterschaft and irrespective of his kill count.
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As if sensing his daughter’s defiant attitude, Yuito went on, “We Sehers are nothing if not the children of the Nexus, and our god-given domains are our calling. War is Lieutenant Athelstan’s calling, do you understand? There is nowhere but the battlefield where he belongs. Where he’s most productive. Where he’s happiest!”
Yuito said this last part with another incredulous—almost savage—laugh.
Asena looked back at her father with as flat an expression as she could manage, then asked quietly, “Even if that battlefield had driven him to the worst Psychic collapse the Joint Forces have ever seen?”
“Especially because of it!” Yuito snapped, very nearly losing his composure. Asena did raise an eyebrow at this. “Don’t you see? The tremendous Psychic strain the subject had been under can only speak to the sheer miracles he’d pulled out of the Nexus. I should know; I was his Kuratorial handler. Even you—you’ve seen the reports!”
This was true enough. The solitary takedown of the behemoth that was Ildfugl. The assault on the Mothership in Sector Aries. Lieutenant Zelen Athelstan had quite literally achieved the impossible in his short career.
Which only made Asena wonder—now more than ever—why a Reiter so young had been entrusted with so much so soon.
“It’s because he’s an Einkunster, isn’t it?”
“What did you say?”
The look her father turned onto Asena now was a peculiar mix of unease and disbelief, a look not unlike the one her mother had worn this time yesterday.
“He was able to perform all these… miracles, thanks to his Einkunst.”
“We had this discussion already, Corporal. There is no evidence to suggest—”
“In his virgin fight against a Voras unit,” Asena interrupted her father for perhaps the first time in her life, and she didn’t even notice herself doing it, “the subject experienced no less than two instances where he failed to defend himself against a fatal attack. And yet, he managed to survive the fight until reinforcements arrived. This is twice now in as many [EVOCATIONS] where he’s shown signs of—”
“You know my view on the matter, Corporal. Recollection artifacts. It’s common enough in our field, and I don’t see why you—”
“If I find evidence,” Asena raised her voice, which now shook slightly. “If I find firm evidence of a Nexus-mediated ability that is beyond the parameters of standard Reiterschaft, will you talk to me then? Will you finally tell me what you’ve been keeping from me all this time?”
Yuito was silent for a long time, perhaps the longest Asena could ever remember her father being speechless. At last, he picked up his glasses—single-vision this time—and blew on the lenses. Then he spoke as he wiped them down:
“If you can find incontrovertible evidence of the subject having employed an Einkunst in battle… then I daresay I’d be obliged to carefully review our next course of action.”
~February 6th, 140 AH~
~Joint Base Akra, Kurator Corps HQ, Terminal One~
Asena’s pulse only quickened and quickened some more, as she replayed just what in hell had happened inside her father’s office.
She reclined into Terminal One and let her assistant busy over the equipment. From the corner of her eyes, she saw the assistant frown as the first readings of her vital signs came through. Then assistant looked down at Kurator with a raised eyebrow, as if to say, what gives?
“I know,” Asena snapped, a tad more harshly than she should’ve. “I just need a moment, okay?”
The last ten minutes or so had been the first time in her life that she’d had a full-blown argument with her father, complete with raised voices, accusations, and barely veiled insults. And she hadn’t even mentioned the paper with the apple diagram, along with the cryptic message contained therein!
Just what had gotten into her? Old Earth textbooks made mention of a ‘rebellious phase’ adolescents often went through, almost as a rule and a rite of passage. Well, it seemed Asena had completely missed the window for hers, only to unleash it all in the last ten minutes.
There was no taking back any of what had been said (shouted), however, and she was committed to the task—now more than ever.
One thing hadn’t changed; she still wanted to help Zelen Athelstan, though what that actually meant remained nebulous at best. What she was certain of, was that she, and perhaps even Zelen himself, had been lied to—by her father and whomever else held the reins over Zelen’s career—and she couldn’t shake the feeling that this lie somehow held the key to her fiancé’s salvation.
Before today, a part of her had wanted to take thing slow, perhaps even delay the mission for as long as possible, in a misguided attempt to give Zelen respite from the war he was expected to fight in again. She now saw that she couldn’t dally. For there was no telling what series of recollections might trigger the restoration of his Nexus attunement, and she needed to arm herself—arm Zelen—with the truth before that could happen.
So, as she and her assistant waited for her vital signs to settle, Asena searched her memories of her father’s reports. She searched for missions that had the highest likelihood of Einkunst activation, given their threat levels and the difficulties encountered therein.
By the time she’d been cleared by her assistant and the headset came down to start her session, she had a clear idea on which threads to pull.
“This is nice,” Zelen said to her (to Silon), about five minutes into the session.
“Is it? I rather worried I’d needlessly upset you, the last time we spoke.”
“Yeah, well, I guess I can be temperamental sometimes… but you knew that about me already. No, I just think it’s nice, getting to know each other again. Because I feel like… I feel like this is something we used to do, you know? Just getting to know each other.”
“Is this a form of companionship, do you think?”
“Oh, for sure it is! Why, you don’t think so?”
“I can’t say for sure. My assumptions were that you would have other sources of companionship that better fit the definition.”
The laughter came through as harsh pops in the static.
“If I heard you right, Silon, you’ve just accused me of not having any friends!”
“Do you remember your friends?”
“I’m starting to. There’s Megha, of course. You probably better know him as Glasswing.”
“Who else?”
A pause.
“There are some friends I lost, like Captain Vasseur. There are some that… I’m not quite sure I can call them friends, but I feel I ought to be friendly with them: someone like Asena Shiranui.”
Asena bit down on the exclamation that nearly escaped her. She let her subject continue on his own.
“Then there’s a tricky third category. The people I thought might’ve been enemies… but it really made more sense for us to be friends?”
“Who might that be?”
“I wanna say… Major Makiri Shiranui. Spindrift.”
“I admit I didn’t expect that answer, Zelen. You always seemed to fear him.”
“I know, I know. God, I can’t hide anything from you, can I? But I think I was only scared of him… because I didn’t know him.”
“Did you eventually get to know him?”
“I did. Just like I got to know you, Silon.”
“How?”
“How?”
“How did you get to know Spindrift?”
Another pause, less hesitant.
“Slowly at first. But then… there was this mission—”