Three Arguments

A/N: Rosalee proves that younger sisters can be just as bossy as older ones.

One swear, small. Arguments, for sure. Post game, HARD SPOILERS to post credits and J-bodies. THAT SHOULD BE PLAYED BLIND, SO GO FINISH before reading further (no, honest, you deserve the best).

All the good stuff belongs to Monolith Soft, but most of these critters are my OCs.

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She'd warned her roommates the night before. It had caused a raging argument among the five women.

"Rosie! You can't have some dude staying with us!" shrieked one.

"He's my brother," she'd yelled back. "You want him sleeping on a park bench like some Nopon?"

"Girls-only house, that's the whole point. None of that barrack bro-stink for us. Something nice, something simple. I'm not paying all this extra rent just to have this place turn into a hotel for strays." The ginger haired woman stopped suddenly, eyes wide. She knew she'd gone too far.

Rosalee wasn't insulted in the least, but she didn't let anyone see that. Use this to your advantage, girl, she thought to herself. "Marina, if you think for one minute…." Her raging response was epic, and would take way too many words, plus descriptions of small kitchen items being tossed around, not very pointy, but dramatic and slightly breakable. By the time the other three had calmed Rosalee down (she had to hide a smirk, never being angry to begin with) and bolstered a shaking Marina and picked up all the cutlery and mugs, the group had reached an agreement. Rosalee's brother was family, so he could stay, but he better find himself a new place to live, and pronto. And the siblings would have to pay double rent for the one room, split across the now 6-person household.

Rosalee judged this would hold them for 3 months, after which she could throw another temper tantrum if necessary. Probably not. She wasn't sure she could stand having this stranger in the house for 3 hours.

The two of them had reached the house to find the other women were waiting for them. Any possible objections had been overwhelmed by their curiosity to see their new roommate. "Girls, this is my brother, Lucky. Lucky, these are girls. Say hello and play nice," she snapped.

Introductions were made, and she watched her brother work his charm. Not. Her. Brother. Lucky was charming, polite, sweet, but vague. Different charm than Diego's, but just as effective. His looks weren't a handicap either.

"I thought your name was Diego," said Brenda, with a flutter of eyelashes.

"Well, yeah." He ducked his head and answered before Rosalee could start up. "New planet, new name. Seemed to fit. What'd'ya think?"

Rosalee was tired of it all. "Come on. Shut eye. You can make friends later."

Once the bedroom door was shut, he laughed. "You sure are bossy for a little sister."

"What do you know about it?"

"Nothing. But I'm right." He wandered around the room, poking at the few knick knacks, lifting up a manual on air filtration and putting it back down quickly. "You told them I was your brother."

"I'm not telling them the truth, and neither are you. They don't need to know you're a shiny bright. Not your fault that the ECP was and remains a bunch of liars. But don't you ever lie to me."

"Shiny bright?"

"Like a penny."

"What?"

"New coin."

"Coin?"

"Credit."

Lucky shrugged. It wasn't making sense, which really made it all fit with the rest of the day. "Well, whatever, thanks for taking me in. Hanging out there, in the center, it gets old."

"If they want to call you my brother, I'm not going to argue. Even though he's dead, I won't have his name and face being dragged around by some blank headed stranger. So, we're just going to pretend that you are normal, and I'm your sister, and things are as they should be."

"I do have a bunch of memories," he began.

"Spare me. I don't want to hear about lies, told you. We're keeping it this way. You're Lucky, I'm looking out for you, and the less we have to talk about, the better."

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Integrating into New Los Angeles came remarkably easy for Lucky. He knew the city within a few days, had made friends within a week. When they walked around, more people started to greet him than her, and he always responded with a lazy wave. He'd been taken on as a BLADE trainee, Reclaimers, not exactly dangerous work, but a lot of lifting and shifting. Diego would have run a mile before spending a whole day digging out a particularly embedded chunk of debris. Scratch that. He would have called a friend, and gotten a lift away from the site, and not returned for three days, leaving their mother frantic and their father splitting with rage and laughter. Lucky didn't seem to mind, although the roommates started to complain about him hogging the shower when he got back from a particularly dirty job. "Worth it, though. He's real guapo, hot even," mentioned one of them.

Rosalee tried to muster up enough anger to tell her to back off, but she wasn't feeling it. Everything about Lucky left her numb. The sorrow over Diego, the rage at the deception, those had burned out fairly quickly in the face of this generally pleasant stranger. All that remained was a nagging fear that his real condition would be revealed. This caused one of the few fights between the pseudo-siblings.

"I'm off, back in a bit."

"Lucky, I don't want you going to those meetings anymore."

"What you say, sis? I need them."

"They're just saying you need them. They're liars. If someone sees you keep going back to the Mimeosome Center, they might get suspicious."

"No one cares."

"People are nosy. People know you. We don't need that."

"Sis, it's cool. Even if people know that I'm a J-body, well, they're getting used to that idea."

"Don't use that word. I don't want anyone thinking you're something less than the rest of us. I don't want it to come out."

"It's not like I'm telling anyone. But I need these meetings."

"Why? You got me. You're set."

Lucky smiled and shook his head. "I got you, but there are things you don't want to know. How it gets so weird, knowing and not knowing at the same time. Things you can't answer, like what to do when my head won't work right. During a job, if that happens, it could be deadly, not just for me. The other guys, they know, they're going through it too. We help each other. Sis, I need to go. Back soon."

Rosalee was scared, to be honest. She knew more about it than most. Part of her first job had been at the Mim Center before she switched to Interceptors. That's how she got the dubious reward of having a family member restored to her before anyone else. Truth was, the organic redemption was a fail. Honestly, even the most patient were getting nervous about the delay. The administration was still trying, but a different way. The ECP was making new colonists from scratch, based on the best data they could recover. Some of the colonist profiles weren't completely destroyed, or so they told her. Some, like Diego, Lucky, would be pulled together from what remained, plus whatever they could pick from family and friends and other records. But these J-bodies, none of them were really real, true to any original person. Damned if they don't keep walking once you wound them up and set them going, though. Back at the start, that room full of men she'd seen, they were all going to be set loose, one by one, to replace the original population that kept getting itself killed off, one by one.

She'd signed off on Lucky, but she knew he was just as fake as the fakest of the batch. Her brother never made the Lifehold, not in any form. He'd never come near the Project while she was working there, except for once, early on.

Her mother had been so proud when Rosalee had started college, then had been so confused when she'd dropped out to join the United Government Forces. She'd fought so hard to see her daughter finish high school, get the grades needed to go further. Why stop school for this? But she had trusted her Rosa, and had believed her enough to feel proud about her choice, even if she didn't understand it. Rosalee had begged Diego to join with her, but back then he'd lived for his music. When had he ever not been fooling around with a guitar and the worst band members available? Actually, in their tiny town, he had to take the only band members available. He'd pushed them to play anywhere and everywhere they could, up and down the Central Valley, crammed into a customized van that was his second love. He even swung one gig not too far from the Project. At the Mel-O-Dee, dumb name for the dumbest bar, with fuzzy crimson wallpaper and a tiny disco ball. Rosalee and her friends made up about half the crowd, but they screamed and cheered and her bother looked as happy as if he were doing the half time of the Super Bowl. That was the closest he'd ever gotten to the Whale.

The last text she got from her mom, during the whole crashing end, said that Diego had jumped in his van and was trying to get their cousins, all stuck in Santa Barbara, safe away from the coast and bring them further inland. Like Bakersfield was going to be safe. But a little town, nestled in the foothills, no one would bother with that, right? They could stay safe there. She was stuck at the launch, loading, toting, running whatever job the Chief assigned her. She never knew how far he got, just that it wouldn't be safe, nowhere was safe, then nowhere was anywhere, everywhere was nowhere, "where" had no more meaning when you talked about Earth.

She knew they hadn't retrieved any records, hadn't magically found some backup. Lucky was not her brother, but no one better call him anything but a citizen.

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The last big fight happened right before Lucky moved out, and was built from the dumbest thing.

Rosalee had been out on an extended mission, following around a specialist xeno team trying to get information about Milsaadi. Rumors of the increasing importance of the silicon-based assassin race among the remaining Ganglion were worrying BLADE HQ, and this collaboration was supposed to measure the threat. It had been rough. The xenos were bad enough, weak and in constant need of care. Her Interceptor team had been joined by a Harrier team that had consistently made things even worse. The whole group was too small to make Cauldros safe, but too big to go unnoticed. They'd drawn fire from above and below, constantly. It got worse when one of the Harriers got it into her head to steal a Milsaadi skell. That had come very close to disaster, with a frantic run home with enemies that would not be shaken, all the way to New Los Angeles, ending with an actual skirmish at the BLADE tower prominence. They had won, sure, but it had been embarrassing to have the Secretary of Defense himself have to drop his coffee so he could help save their hides. The stolen skell had sunk into the blast gel after falling and bouncing off the covered highway, and Lucky would probably be fishing it out by morning. All in all, there was a lot of explaining to do, and she was glad that Akulov was the team leader and not herself. They'd kicked the rest of the team loose after a good two hours of debriefing, but last she saw, the Lieutenant was still standing there, explaining crisply in her regular snarl, with her shadow Evans beside her, not exactly helping with his apologetic voice, half whine, half snark, plus all that blast gel dripping off of him.

It wasn't the mission that had caused the fight. Bad as it was, she'd come home safe. Tired and grubby, in need of rest and a shower, but safe. It wasn't Lucky being worried about her or criticizing the mission. No, as stated before, it was stupid. She'd dragged herself into their room and spotted Lucky and completely lost it.

"What have you done to yourself?!"

Lucky smiled that slanty, superior smile that was so close to Diego's and stretched out his arms. "Like it?" He stood up and twisted around, to give her a better view.

Rosalee stared at him in horror.

"I got it done while you were away. I figured if I didn't like it, I'd get rid of it before you came home. But I like it."

From shoulder to wrist, his arms were wreathed in tattoos. Probably all along his back and chest, since they seemed to creep out from under the tank he was wearing too. A few flickered on the base of his neck, the trailing edge of larger images. And talk about bright: green and purple on one side, yellow and orange on the other, glowing blue at the peak of his shoulder.

"What have you done?! You've ruined …" Rosalee couldn't say another word. She couldn't admit that, wrong though it was, she had gotten used to seeing something that sort of looked like her brother. But Diego had never, ever gotten a single tattoo, probably the only wanna-be rock star in California with baby clean skin.

"It's Mira. Check it out." Lucky started to give her the tour, although she could barely listen. Nightglow Forest on the right arm, complete with telethia sweeping over his shoulder. Oblivia on the left, with the crook of his elbow serving as the gap and the Great Ring on his biceps. He started to take off his shirt, so she could admire Primordia plains and New Los Angeles (directly over where a heart would be). "The guy wanted to put the moons someplace else, but I don't need bad jokes on my ass. They're on my back, all five of them, from Majora to Littlepon, right over Sickle Rock."

"Stop. Stop! STOP! You look like a clown! You look ridiculous! Everyone is gonna stare at you."

"It looks awesome, and I'm proud of them. I got two friends to design it, and the best tattoo guy to slap it on. It has everything. I even have a Nopon or two hiding on my elbow." He craned his neck over his right shoulder, trying to spot the critters.

"I bet you blew all your credits on this trash!"

"Yup. Like I need so much else."

"You're going to need as much to get rid of it."

"Nope. It stays."

"Diego would never had messed up his body like that. He hated…" Rosalee stopped again, staring at this painted stranger in horror.

Lucky looked at her with distant eyes. Calm. Unmoved. "He hated needles. I know. But I don't. I almost remember it, but not really. You keep telling me I'm not your brother, and you're right. I thought you'd be glad of proof."

Rosalee did remember. One time, a screaming Diego had to be held down by two nurses and their mama while they tried to get a flu shot into him. Rosa had taken her shot first, and smiled a tiny superior smile at her big brother, daring him not to make a scene, with eyes that already knew he'd lose. Her smile didn't grow as he completely lost it, a big boy of 9 flailing like a baby, but it didn't vanish. The only cloud was that her mama had bought them both ice cream afterwards, even though Diego clearly hadn't earned it. She looked at Lucky now. He was wearing the same tiny smile.

"I'm trying to change up my look, sis. Make me into something I really like. I was thinking of growing a beard, maybe." He stroked his lean chin and tilted his head back thoughtfully.

"You do that and I will kill you. No. You want to ruin yourself, go ahead, fine, look like a clown. But don't try to get closer to Diego after that." Another memory, one she realized they also shared in some weird way. Diego had worn the smallest beard since leaving high school. Once he said wanted to be a beatnik. Her mother and Rosalee weren't quite sure what he meant, even after they looked it up. The pictures had been so flat, and most of them even without any color, which made them hard to understand. They certainly didn't understand the stuff he started reciting like poetry. "You farm families, and teachers, and teamsters, and cops, and cooks/You rock 'n' rollers, and holy rollers, all of you who work so hard/You full-time moms, you with the hands that rock the cradle, you all make the world go round/And now our cause is one." They'd been glad to have him go back to screaming his music in the garage. But the soul patch had stayed, and had looked good, she had to admit.

Lucky shrugged. "Okay. Just a thought, anyway. I like the tattoos better. You better go take a shower. Not to be mean, but you stink, sis."

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A/N: Poetry courtesy of Sarah Palin, America's greatest living beat poet.

I'm slowly choosing names for the moons: Majora, Umbra, TBA, TBA, and Littlepon. Any suggestions/corrections will be appreciated.

The specialist that stole the skell is named Case, and lives in my head, coming out only when my real Cross is busy. If I play XCX again, I'll run her, as an Interceptor. Or I'll just write the fic: that skell theft happened, it's now canon, right out of the Ganglion Antropolis, because Case got her name from head case.

Next up: Another fight, with music! Bonus: Mara (yeah! I love writing Mara).