FYI, Anpathos is the name given for what I called Rodrigo in canon. I just somehow never registered the scene until I watched episode 9 for the five billionth time while trying to write that chapter.

THE MORE YOU KNOW!

"Come on!"

"Noooooo!"

The urge to punch the stuck up blond is rising. Jura really knows how to drag out the "Iiya" to send electricity up and down my spine. I've mentioned it before, but I still hear the language spoken in Japanese, and I understand what each word means. It's not being converted to English first before I can understand it. I can also speak it well enough, though I had a bit of trouble enunciating my "tsu" properly at first.

The reason I bring this up is because if Jura was just being translated, "no" is a deeper sound, one I could block out. "Iiya" is high pitched. And piercing.

Which is why I want to punch her.

"Look, who cares if your Dread isn't the most beautiful? It's still more powerful than most of the others!"

"Most?" She scoffs, despite her pout. "Mine is the most powerful!"

"And we need to use it to stop the captain getting her spine ripped out!"

"NO!"

"GRRR!"

I rub my face.

God, I wish I was a chessmaster type. One of those smooth types that can just tell people what they need to hear to get them to do what they need to do. Think. What drives Jura? Beauty? No, more like...

Ego.

"Jura, if you save the captain, the vice-captain, and the rest of this damn planet, won't you be a hero?"

She finally looks at me, though a bit suspiciously. I decide to continue pressing.

"Surely then you'll prove your Dread is the most powerful of them all. You might even be able to ask a favor of the captain."

I have her full attention now. "Do you think?"

"Yeah, probably." I hope I don't get lynched by the captain for this. "So, let's go save the planet?"

She stands up and visibly resets her attitude, clenching her fist and shouting about how great her Dread is. Yeah, sure, let's just get our job done, m'kay?

A few minutes later and we're in orbit, approaching the section of space directly above the last remaining city above sea level.

By the way, Vandreads accelerate really, really fast. You don't feel it in space, but these things cover serious ground. I almost blacked out a few times, though Jura seemed completely alright. Maybe she's gone through some sort of training. My seriously blood lacking brain still manages to draw out the thought that maybe I should make a note never to ride with Meia somewhere where gravity has a chance to override inertial compensators.

"Above" us in terms of the planet's gravity well sits the harvester ship. It's an ugly, bundt pan - barnacle - onion hybrid that has a vacuum that works IN SPACE, not that the vacuum is currently running. Now, sharp reader will note that that's patently stupid. Space is called space because there's nothing here, at least not in sufficient quantities to carry sound, breath, push off against, or most importantly in this case, create a lower pressure zone to suck air away. That's vacuums do, create a void and fill it with dirt and debris. Somehow, this harvester is creating a lower pressure than space.

That's not exactly possible.

I'm still mentally bitching about this while Jura is pressing buttons all around her, shoving me out of the way twice as she swings around. After the second bump, I look back down at her, irritated. "What are you doing?"

She seems not to register my tone as she points up at the sphere in the center of the cockpit. "That thing is causing some sort of gravitational anomaly. I'm trying to figure out what's it's doing and how it's doing it. From what these readings say, it looks like it's harnessing a black hole, but that shouldn't- What's that look for?"

I'm staring at Jura hard. "Wait, how do you know all this?"

She narrows her eyes. "I wasn't the pilot that failed the space anomaly test." She says.

I roll my eyes, but she has a point. She has to have at least SOME brains in her head. "No, not that. How do you know what the ship is doing?"

She points up at the incomprehensible sphere. I look up to it, and back down, my neck starting to complain from looking all around me so much. "You can read that?"

"You can't?" She stands out of her chair, reach up into the large display to a random red blob. "What's this mean?"

"It's a red blob. I don't know, is it the position we are above the planet?"

She stares at me incredulously. "Of course not! It's the relative gravitational pull! See how it's shifting towards the enemy as we get closer?"

"...No? Jura, are you sure? We've both only gotten to use this thing for a short time-"

"It's just like back at the academy." She retorts. "All of the pilots are required to learn how to read one of these. I got a custom sensor suite installed in my Dread to mimic it."

...What? Airhead Jura has a super advanced sensor suite on her ship? "You've got to be kidding me."

"Were you not trained in their use?" Her lips curl up in a smirk, then shifts to a crafty grin. "I guess I'll have to spend some teaching you the basics."

Her words send a shiver down my spine, adding to the now familiar ice from the Paksis. Scenes from the show from after Jura finds the reproduction book flash through my head. Before long though, my brain hard faults back to "Wait, how smart is she?"

I could have killed myself once I realized I had spoken aloud.

Her face has grown cold, as cold as it was when I first arrived on the ship, and as cold as it had been when I had broken Meia's arm. "Are you implying that I am an idiot?"

"I-"

"Did you see my usual demeanor and decide there was nothing there? I can be professional when I need to be. I graduated with honors from the pilot academy. I choose to enjoy my life rather than stay stuck up and cold like Meia." She leans in close. "Am I clear?"

My brain had completely quit, and I respond on automatic. "Crystal."

"Good."

She goes back to monitoring the situation as I slowly come back to reality. I can feel something inside me change, something important. I think I just finally acknowledged these people as... well, people.

I know I've told myself lots of times that these aren't characters, that they're real people, but I guess I just didn't believe it until just now. Maybe the realization that Jura has hidden depths behind the ditsy blond persona has finally shocked that last bit of doubt away. These are not the 2D people I liked to watch clown around on a spaceship on my computer. These are real people, with their own lives, histories, and skills. Sure, I'm privy to more than my fair share of them, but obviously not all of them.

When I look back up at the sky, I can see the harvester is moving, adjusting its "mouth" to start sucking up... er, what? All that's out here is us and the Nirvana. the rest of the fleet is down on the float, and it's not in range of the planet yet, right?

I get my answer a second later as the small robots the harvest fields closest to its maw are suddenly pulled inwards. Jura's display in the center of the Vandread suddenly lights up like a Christmas tree, a lot of warnings going off all at once. To me, it's a confusing 3D jumble of light, but Jura immediately starts pressing buttons in response.

In addition, the small escort bots leave formation from around the harvester and start clustering into two bunches. One headed for the Nirvana, another moving around to dodge the space vacuum and head for us.

"We need to intercept that ship before it gets into the atmosphere." Jura says. "From what this is saying, once it get's into the atmosphere, it will launch something at itself from the surface, which will be caught in it's massive gravity well." She frowns. "It has to be harnessing a black hole, to make gravitational field this big."

"Can't we put up a shield?" I ask. A moment later I curse myself. I must still be reeling from Jura's revelation. "Er, or... shoot super lasers at it?" I finish lamely.

Jura becomes thoughtful. "That could work. Scoot over." She commands. I shift my seat further around the ship as Jura starts fiddling with the controls where I had been sitting. She talks out loud as if on autopilot, her normally ditsy personality still not back. "This is based on the Mejare done control systems, and those have shielding programs right... here." She presses a button and the sphere above us suddenly goes blank.

Well, not actually blank. After a second, I notice a few pricks of blue light hovering around the green wireframe. Jura slowly begins to laugh, first normally and then switching to her princess 'o-ho-ho.'

"What?"

"When we are combined, I gain the most powerful shield!" She presses a few buttons, and the discs hovering around the edges speed off in all directions, linking up and creating the planet-wide shield. I glance out of the window to confirm with my own eyes that the planet is now safe. Sure enough, there's a weird glittery sheen of the entire atmosphere, giving in indescribably quality. The central display actually has words and labels now too. Fancy. "I am the greatest! My Dread is the greatest! Nobody else can cover an entire planet!"

At least she's cheerful again. "So... we're good then?"

"Well... I don't know how powerful the shield is, but it should stop the gravity beam."

"What about the harvester ship?"

She looks at the screen some more, her cheerfulness fading away a bit. "Er, it should be slowing down?"

I glance up. If anything, it looks like it's speeding up, though it might just be moving that fast already and distortion due to distance- you know what, it doesn't matter. "No, it's still coming."

The central display flips back the 3D space that I couldn't fathom. There's no writing anywhere! Labels! I need Labels! Who designs a UI without Labels!

Wait, I see some text, but it's really tiny, and partially obscured by other "messages".

"It's shifting its position slightly, heading for the nearest shield emitter." Jura says. "That's where the shield is weakest. They must be planning on taking out the emitter on the way down."

I grimace. "Alright, new plan. Fire lasers at it until it dies."

"We can't! Our output isn't anywhere close to enough to take it down, and Dita is still on the surface of the planet!"

Under the shield, of course. "Can we, I don't know, stack shielding around the point of impact?"

"I don't think it can be configured that way." Jura fiddles with more buttons. "I don't have time to experiment either!"

I glare at the Nirvana through the canopy. What's taking Bart so long to fire the lasers? Surely he's at the point where he's desperate enough to use them! I mean, he's being hammered out there, and if that didn't get him emotional enough for the Paksis to respond-

Oh.

Oh SHIT.

Bart activates the lasers after Shirley dies, not here. What happened in the show then? I can't remember, though I'm pretty sure last time it was a close call and there was the entire Nirvana fleet out here to fight.

I stare more intently at the Nirvana, easy to see against the blackness of space as its shields pulse with energy each time one of the little robots collides with it. This means the Nirvana has no weapon system. Which means that the only weapons in orbit on our side is us, and we're busy shielding the planet so nothing can get in or out, even reinforcements.

"Uh, Jura, we also have a swarm of those cube thing bearing down on us." I comment. "And our weapon system is busy."

Jura is still looking around, fiddling with one system in particular. I can't see what it is she's doing. She suddenly whips her chair around to grab onto me, sending the two of us speeding around in circles. "I got it! I can defeat it!"

"Er, great." I place my hand on her face and try to push her off. "So, can we be doing that? The enemy is getting really close, and the Nirvana's shields stopped glowing a while ago."

She lets go and points to a button on the center console. "Quick, press that!"

I slam my fist down, and the Vandread lurches downwards alarmingly. For a second, I don't realize what's going on, but then large disk that hadn't headed out with the others positions itself in the center of the claws just as a torrent of water comes up from the surface. Jura angles the emitter to send the water into the maw of the harvester ship, and I just stare up in amazement as Jura's idea works. The harvest suddenly stops sucking, then all at once implodes in on itself, leaving no trace.

The other robotic units stop firing their thrusters suddenly, and they head for the atmosphere of the planet, so much space junk to turn into shooting stars as they burn up upon entry.

Mission success?

Jura starts cheering, her bubbly personality back in full swing. She starts giving herself praise, saying how perfect her machine is, the complete 180 from her early attitude making me smile.

As Jura calms down enough to take down the shield, a rogue thought strikes me.

"Say, Jura. Does Dita have any... hidden depths, or is she actually the ditz she appears to be?"

Jura thinks for a second, then gets her mischievous grin going again. "Maybe you should watch her work on her dread once."

No, spare my heart. It'll stop if I get any more horrible wake up calls.

Bart lies down on the floor outside the piloting vestibule, groaning in pain. The bridge girls look at the pathetic man, then each other. Cel is still wearing her bear suit, her oh so lame protective barrier from the boys hardly ever gone these days.

Amarone thinks that Cel's reaction are a bit over the top, but she wouldn't push it. They've been friends too long for that. A hologram shows up in front of her, revealing the captain's face.

"Amarone, I need you to get to the hangar and escort John up there"

Amarone raises her eyebrow. "What for?" In the background, she can see some people running around, including Dita, who are busy making something in the background. Something that looks suspiciously like a wheelchair. Amarone briefly notes that the captain is hunched over in pain, and puts two and two together.

The captain grimaces. "I'll tell him that later. for now, just head down to the hangar."

"Yes ma'am."

When we get back to flying around the Nirvana, the first thing I notice is how badly it's damaged. I think this is the first time I've seen it even get scratched since the Nirvana grew itself a shielding system. It's really bad. A lot of the hull is blackened.

Jura and I end up separating and we land in the hangar. The skeleton crew that had volunteered to stay on board instead of heading down to the boat greets us. One of them, the dark skinned woman who's part of the bridge crew comes up to me. "The captain says you need to go up to the bridge right away." She says curtly.

I nod politely and step around her. She places a hard hand on my shoulder, stopping me in my tracks. She doesn't even look at me as she says "Don't bother Cel."

"Got it. Don't bother the cosplayer." I sigh. "I wonder what's going on?"

The trek upstairs is a long one, practically from the bottom of the ship to the top. Not helping is the detour due to an entire section locked down due to a hit that had landed and decompressed the whole compartment.

About halfway up, the captain's face appears before me. I throw her a cheerful salute, though I don't stop. "Captain."

"John. Headed to the bridge?"

"As ordered."

"Good. We're going to remain in orbit around Anpathos for a few more days as we make repairs." She says.

I wait for her to get to her point, but she's clearly waiting for me to say something. "Okay, right. Repairs. Do I... need to fix something on the bridge?"

She shakes her head, her face displaying amusement. It puts me on my guard. "No, I couldn't ask you to do that when we have much more skilled crew to do that. I wouldn't want one of your... errors to affect the ship."

"Hey. That was one time, and how was I supposed to know that you guys use really unstable lithium batteries? I know better now."

"Yes, well, maybe another time. I need you to pilot the Nirvana."

..What? "What?"

"I need you to pilot the Nirvana for a few days. Bart isn't doing to well after that last battle, so I'm giving him some vacation time. In the mean time, I'm having you pilot it to make sure repairs go smoothly."

"Er, I'm not qualified-"

"I thought you were a pilot as well?" Magno says.

"That was Bart lying his ass off, and you know it." I glare at the screen. "Sure, I'll get in the pilot seat, if it'll let me."

"Excellent. Oh, and by the way."

"Yeah?"

"Jura says she expects to be made captain of the Nirvana for a day. Something you promised her, I think. I decided to make it three days, while we oversee repairs."

You... you bitch. "Hey!"

She cuts the connection. I feel like slamming my fist into a wall, but I think better of it. Hopefully, Jura's not too ridiculous a captain.

"...which is why the gravity effect worked." Jura conclude her long, long explanation on gravity generators.

I had made the mistake of asking her how the gravity generators worked, and the FTL, and... well, all of the sci-fi bits. That was a day ago. A literal day. Jura is quite knowledgeable about the ship's systems, and she's milking every bit of time with me she can. In between explanations, she would flirt at me, hinting at the start of her drive to be the first Mejare woman to have an all natural child. It's already started, god help me. Er, maybe I should pray to Madoka, or Homura. Anime is more real than reality right now, so it might even work.

On second thought, let's hope Kyubey isn't a real thing.

Anyway, I had stopped paying attention to the temporary captain a long time ago, once she started talking about "folding space-time in eight dimensions" and other things that generally seemed like technobabble. If I ever meet the Fixer again, I'm going to ask him how much of any given universe's physics is made up to suit the story. Or, is it the other way around where the bizarre physics and situations cause the stories?

My headache isn't getting better thinking about things. Instead, I content myself with my latest pet project: Trying to figure out how these damn holograms are projected. I can shove my arm right through them without disturbing the image, so it's not hard light. It's not getting shoved out of the way, either. It's not some sort of projector, at least as far as I can tell. Otherwise there would be shadows where the hologram couldn't reach like when I pressed myself into a wall.

Right now I'm busy wiggling my arm through Jura's happily explaining face to try to see if I can figure out which direction it's being projected from. Still no luck. The picture is fine aside from an arm blocking my view. I eventually give up and reluctantly look back at the monitor.

Instead of blond, I'm greeted by maroon. Dita has pushed Jura aside and is looking at me excitedly. "Mister Alien!"

Despite myself, I smile slightly. "What's up, Dita?"

"You're naked!"

My smile instantly evaporates. "No."

"But I didn't ask anything yet." Dita starts to pout.

"Okay, ask."

"Can I jo-"

"No."

"Aw, can I at least look-"

"No."

"Why? I want to see your tube!" She wails.

Thankfully for my ever-waning sanity, there's only the three of us on the bridge. I think. "Dita, no. It's like me just waltzing in on you while you're taking a shower."

"I don't mind!"

...I want to cry. "But I do!"

"Why?"

Jura interrupts from the side. "He's not going to show you, Dita. He's been saving himself for me!"

Well, there's her intentions spelled out, if I had any doubts it was headed that way. "No, I'm not. I'm not saving myself-"

Dita shove herself into frame again. "Then we can still get married?"

"What?" I had forgotten that detail. "No, Dita-"

"I'm going to get him to give me his babies!" Jura snaps at her fellow pilot.

A new window appears off to the side. I glance at it to see Meia with an amused smile on her face. "Having fun?"

"Save me."

"Sorry, no, captains orders."

"Typical."

Suddenly, her normal unexpressiveness stops and she looks to the side casually, a motion too out of place to actually seem casual. "So, they're still arguing over who gets you first again?"

"...first?"

Her face colors, and I can see her eyes track down for a second before flicking back up to my face. Right, she said something about Polygamy being acceptable on Mejare. Spreads the genes around more, mix 'em up for earth, I guess... I wonder how many male and female only genetic traits are being created now that we have effectively made ourselves mono-gendered species?

My eyes focus back on the monitor. "Look, back home it's not quite acceptable." I keep my wording vague since Dita and Jura are still on the line, though not really paying attention. "And I'm not comfortable with the idea."

She sighs. "I know. You still refuse to acknowledge our feelings."

"Hey. I acknowledge them." I say. "I just don't return them."

The captain's pod falls dead silent. I look back towards the front to find two surprised faces looking back at me. Dita's face starts to puff up, and before I can say anything, she bolts off.

"Well fuck."

It's the end of summer, I'm gearing up for what should be my last semester at college, and somehow I have more projects to do than I did at the end of last term. I blame my HTC Vive, writing fanfiction, and XCOM War of the Chosen.

Oh, and I started making an RPG MUD. If you know what that is without google, I'll let you beta test it when it's ready.

Next time: Panic, Panic, and more Panic.