86th District, Republic of San Magnolia

April 13th, Stellar Year 2142

Ten year old Vladilena Milize pressed her hands against the airplane window. It was as if to bring herself closer to the sheer-white world outside it; feeling the cold glass on her palms, the rumble of the wind rushing past the plane, she could pretend she was out there too in that open sky. She felt the turbulence rushing past the skin of the plane as it soared at however-many-hundred kilometers per hour a plane flew. But it wasn't quite close enough, so she leaned even further in until her forehead pressed against the glass.

She looked down at a land of snow stretching as far as the eye could see, shining silver with the moonlight. It was like nothing else she'd ever seen. There was nothing that could be more gorgeous. The streets of Liberte et Egalite far behind her had seemed pretty too, gold reflection of electric lamps on fresh snow, but that now seemed boring in comparison - fake to her somehow, now that she'd seen what the snow could look like with only the moon to shine down on it.

"Papa, it's beautiful," she murmured.

"No, Lena, it's not beautiful," Papa reproached gently. "Don't you see? Those are ruins."

"But they're pretty," she protested. And they really were. The thousands and thousands of snow-covered buildings were like marble towers in the night.

"Perhaps it's beautiful from up high like this, but the 86 don't get to see the world like we do. While they're on patrols they must march through that snow and shiver in the cold, and they don't have warm homes to come back to when they finish, like we do."

Lena nodded seriously. She became acutely aware of the warmth of the cabin and the coat she was wearing, of the wind rattling on the window. She could imagine how cold it must have been out there.

"Yes, Papa," she said. "It's too bad they can't see this. It really is pretty."

"Maybe one day, when we've freed the 86 from the shackles our country put on them, we can show them what their world looks like from above. And maybe we can all call it beautiful together."

Father wasn't wearing his usual stern-faced expression. Instead his face was lit by the warmth of a wide smile. So she smiled right back at him, just as wide and just as warm.

"Yeah!"

When Lena was a little smaller, hearing Papa talk about the 86 made her think that their world must have been just awful. She imagined huge, gross slums and entire streets flooded with filth. She imagined some poor 86 boy (in her head he always had red hair, red like fire) picking food out of garbage piles all day, only to end up hungry anyway. And then he'd go home and crawl onto a bed made of wet cardboard, with only a dirty blanket to keep off the rain.

She never imagined they could live in a world as pretty as this one. Even if it was a cold one.

But that was why Papa brought her on this trip, wasn't it? So she could see for herself how the 86 lived. And maybe so they both could get ideas for how to help them. She thought it was a great idea to show them what their district looked like from this high up. They'd definitely love it.

Lights flashed in the distance. Bright orange ones flaring up, with little white dots in their centers, flying up into the sky like angel's arrows, trails of smoke following behind them. Lena pressed even closer to the window as she gave an "oooohh!" of appreciation.

"Papa, look! Fireworks!"

Papa turned to look.

Before the fire, the smoke and the heat came to wash all else away, the last thing she remembered was the feeling of her father's hands, strong on her shoulders. Pulling her away.

—

Unbroken snow shone with the fire.

The snow glowed a fluorescent orange and was speckled with shining, crystalline beads of refracted light. Like diamonds on a sea of magma. Lena stared out at it with wide and empty eyes. 'It's pretty,' was her only thought, the two words wandering dazedly through her mind. Her last thoughts, before the crash, had been of beauty. Now they were the only thoughts left in her at all.

She turned to the wreck of the plane. It was flaming on the left side and burnt out on the right. The scorched half was a black-on-black shadow in the night. She thought it was amazing the way it soaked the firelight, how the black became shades of ocher and muddy topaz, how enclaves of embers continued to burn long after their flames retreated.

She looked at Papa. He laid on broken snow. He was covered by a red glossy wetness, and the fire shone on him. The fire made his redness glow like it held its own orange light shining from inside. His eyes were stuck open. They were not silver, but red, because the fire shone on them too. All that Lena could see was painted by the flames. Her whole world was red, orange, and gold.

It's so pretty, she thought. She would remember those words for the rest of her life. At the moment they came to her it didn't seem like she was thinking at all. It was like there was a voice speaking in her head at a time when the only other sound she could hear was a deafening tinnitus ring. So very pretty.

Lena didn't hear the Legion drone approach. She couldn't. But she could feel it, the quake of the ground as heavy metal legs pounded the snow. There was a man standing by the burning plane. The pilot, she remembered distantly. There was a gun in his hands. He was screaming something, and he was shooting, but Lena couldn't hear what he was saying or the sound of his gunfire. Instead she looked to see what he was shooting at.

And it was there.

It was huge, like a great silver-blue spider standing taller than five of her put together. It had sharp legs. It had sharper arms. It had a cruel, expressionless face with glassy blue eyes glaring coldly. Even colder than the snow. Sparks sprayed off silver metal as bullets crashed against it, but the drone didn't flinch. It walked closer to the man, ground shaking as it moved, and it raised its blade-arm high, and the man pulled and pulled at the trigger of his gun, but no more flashes came out.

The blade swept down.

Lena thought that even the great red geyser was pretty.

She stared at the headless body still holding the gun, standing for what felt like forever until he slumped, fell first on its knees and then to the ground, and the redness gushing out his neck soaked the snow and turned it pink. The Legion drone looked at her next.

And when its horrible glass eyes fall to hers, the shellshock that held her mind finally, and spectacularly, broke.

"No…" she whispered. "No! NooOOOOOoooOO!" She screamed, swung her hands behind her and found traction on the snow, cold crystal bite of it on her fingers. She pushed herself back as the drone stomped toward her. "NO! No stay AWAY! PLEE-heeEAA-EEASE!"

Its answer was an alien chittering sound that sounded almost like words.

She shuffled back far and fast, and for one merciful moment she was putting distance between them, like she might somehow get away. Then her back touched something hot and a flash of pain crisped her skin. She flinched forward. Over her shoulder she saw the burned hull of the plane, steam baking off the blackened shell, embers glowing on scorched metal.

The Legion drone came closer. It offered another metallic chitter. It raised one blade-arm high, and the high whine of its vibration pushed its way into her tinnitus-struck ears, a sickening screech that brought water to her eyes. She wanted to at least close them. Even looking at the monster made her terror that much worse. But every part of her was frozen. Paralyzed even down to her eyelids.

She could only watch.

"[YOU! Girl! Cover your ears and get down!]"

A man's voice on a loudspeaker.

Lena recognized an order when she heard one. She was a soldier's daughter through and through.

Her hands go over her ears just as an explosion strikes the drone's backside. A flash and flame paints orange light across Lena's face. The machine is driven back and set spinning, a blackened hole opened just above its rearmost legs as a Juggernaut storms in from the darkness. It slides to a stop in front of Lena and crouches over her, and the Legion drone twitches, raises its blade-arms - and charges. Thunder from the Juggernaut, blinding muzzle-flash of the two machine-guns, but the drone moves in a zig-zagging pattern and no shots land, and the Juggernaut moves as if to back up, but stops when it remembers Lena just behind it. It has no room to dodge. The drone arcs back its blades, drives them down-

-and is shot again, this time in the dead center of its body. A hole blows through it, spraying metal shards. The drone tumbles onto its side, blades twitching up but reaching nothing. Lena can't help but stare as its silver blood pours across the snow. She thinks that it looks just like any other animal when it's dying like this. She almost feels sorry for it. Almost.

There was another Juggernaut some distance away. Lena turned to it. Smoke curled off the end of its cannon.

"[Gotta work on your aim, Rei,]" a girl's voice rumbled from its loudspeaker. "[I might not be around next time to fix your mistake.]"

"[Look, the turret's slow, alright? And clunky. I try to turn it five degrees, and sometimes it turns three, other times eight. How am I supposed to be accurate with garbage like this?]"

"[A poor craftsman-]"

"[-blames his tools. Yep, yep, I got it Kaie. Believe me, I got it. Hard not to when you repeat it ten times an hour.]"

A third Juggernaut approached, turret scanning the site of the plane-wreck. It came to a stop close to where Lena sat, and Lena could only look up wonderingly at the great metal spider. Her hands were still clapped over her ears. She was waiting until someone told her she could take them off.

The canopy popped open. A girl hopped out onto the snow, black hair and black eyes. She was older than Lena was, and a lot taller, but she didn't seem like all-the-way an adult yet, and somehow that was comforting.

"Sorry about those two," she said gently, holding out her hand. "Are you okay?"

Lena stared blankly at the girl's outstretched hand. Her mind seemed unable to process that she was safe. Her heart continued to thunder, muscles sore with adrenaline. Her eyes remained locked on on the body of the Legion drone. Even as the last of its twitches stilled, she couldn't help but expect that it would rise again somehow.

"Don't worry," the girl said. "It's safe. Come on, take my hand."

It helped to be given the order. She took it and the girl pulled Lena to her feet.

"What's your name? I'm Alice."

"I'm… Lena," she said. Her voice was smoke-strained and shaky. It hurt to talk.

"Lena, huh?" Alice smiled gently at her, squeezing her hand. "That's a pretty name."

Lena nodded but didn't reply. She tried to. It was impolite not to answer when someone complimented you, and Mama said that a daughter of the Milize must always be polite, but then Papa would laugh and-

Papa.

She tried to look back at him, see his face again, but when she saw the first splashes of firelit red in her peripheral vision, her stomach curled in upon itself and she was instantly sick. Violently sick. Before any more thoughts of propriety could cross her mind she shoved Alice away and dropped to her knees again and vomited on the snow, throat burning, eyes watering. But she'd already puked a little while ago, after she first woke up, so the only thing that came out of her was a hot, clear and sour liquid.

Alice crouched down, patting gently at Lena's back. "It's okay," she said softly. "Just look at me, alright? Not at anything else."

Lena tried to. She really did, but the words sounded like she was hearing them from underwater, and her eyes kept turning with a force of their own, to where she knew he was, even though she really didn't want to see it. But somehow she had to. Like there was something pulling her head toward it, and-

And Alice took Lena's chin gently in her palms and turned up her head, made Lena meet her silver eyes with the older girl's black ones, and for the second time that night something broke inside her. Heat flooded through her eyes. Tears spilled out and coursed down her cheeks. Her mouth broke open with the force of a crying moan, and Alice put one hand on Lena's head and one on her back and pulled her close, stroking her hair as Lena screamed into her shoulder in a voice choked raw with grief. She screamed until her lungs were empty and burning and her stomach ached, until her fingertips tingled from lack of air and she was spinning dizzy. Until she collapsed, shivering in the older girl's arms.

"It's okay," Alice whispered. "It's okay."

For awhile after that, time was a blur. At some point Alice moved Lena away from the crashed plane to a building a couple streets down, where not even the firelight could be seen, let alone the wreckage itself. Lena wouldn't be able to remember when that was, only that it happened. Neither would she remember the moment when the two others joined them, only that at some point they had. One was a man with bright red hair. His name was Rei. Kaie was the other one, a younger girl, also black-haired and black-eyed like Alice. Lena thought they were sisters.

"Why were you and your… why were you flying out here, Lena?" Alice asked at some point after Lena stopped crying.

Lena sniffed. The first words that came to her were ones Papa said to her, about coming to see how the 86 lived beyond the Gran Mur, and that made her want to cry all over again. But somehow she managed not to. Maybe she'd used up all her tears by now.

"Papa, he… he took me out to go flying, because he said I should see what the Republic was doing to the 86… to you guys. He said the country was being really cruel to you all. That…" Her voice trailed. She remembered the red geyser. The golden shine of all that blood when the firelight struck it.

"Why did you save me?" Lena asked suddenly. "When we're so cruel to you?"

Alice smiled. They sat at the same level, the older girl crouched down to meet her eyes, and Lena looked into her black irises and saw nothing but kindness. It was an indescribable comfort.

"Because we're all the same on the inside, Lena." Alice took Lena's hand and held it warmly. There were spots of blood on the little girl's palm, but she couldn't remember where it came from. Alice took out a handkerchief and wiped it all away.

"Alba, Jet, Orienta and Onyx." Alice glanced at the other two, Kaie and Rei standing guard by the door. "We breathe the same air and we bleed the same blood. It doesn't matter if you're from the Republic or if we're 86. Before any of that, we're people Lena. All of us. And we don't let people die if we can help it."

"People…" Lena murmured. "Papa says the same thing. That we're all people who deserve to be treated the same way."

Alice smiled fondly. "Your papa was a great man, Lena."

"Is he… can Papa get better, Alice? Is he gonna be okay?"

She looked away. She said nothing, and the silence gave Lena room to hope.

"He might, right? We didn't check on him, and I didn't really look at him too clearly. So he might be okay! We should go back and make sure, and get him inside so he's not cold. We can-"

"No, Lena," Alice said. "Your papa's gone."

The words came to a quick and ragged end. Her mouth hung open, lower lip trembling, but no sound came through. Not even a cry. Without another word Alice pulled Lena into another hug, took a gentle hold of her head and pressed it against her shoulder and held her as Lena learned she hadn't yet run out of tears to shed. That she hadn't even come close.

The grief passed like a wave broken on the shore, receding just enough for her to breathe again, but continuing to pull at her legs, to lap at her feet. It felt like the only thing stopping her from being ripped all the way out to drift was Alice's arms around her shoulders.

The spout of tears slowed first to a trickle, and then to droplets, and Alice gave her one last pat on the back before she let her go. She took her handkerchief and dabbed at Lena's sore, puffy eyes, wiped the snot from her nose.

Lena's voice was a throat-sore whisper. "What do I do now, Alice? How do I get home?"

Alice thought about it for one moment. Then one moment became several, and each passing second second without hearing her confident, caring voice bloomed a frigid dread in Lena's heart. If Alice didn't know what to do, then no one would, and she would be stuck out here forever in the cold, shivering until she died.

"Was your father in the military, Lena?" Alice asked at last. "There was an army crest on your plane."

"Yes. He's a… he was, a general."

"The sky's clear tonight. The radio should be able to reach our base. We'll have someone contact our Handler, get a rescue party sent out. It shouldn't take too much persuading, if your father was that high up.

"We'll wait with you until they come," she added.

Lena couldn't help the relieved sigh she gave.

"Thank you," Lena said. "Thank you all so mu-"

She was interrupted by her own growling belly. "Eh?" She was so surprised by the sound she looked down at her stomach like it was something foreign. After endless assaults of terror and grief, she'd almost forgotten what something as mundane as hunger even felt like.

But now that she remembered it again, it hit her in full. She felt suddenly faint, vision dizzy at the edges. And her stomach hurt. A lot.

Alice laughed softly. "Guess you're running on empty, huh? Hang on, I'm pretty sure I've got something for you." She reached into her back pocket and rummaged. Then she frowned. Rummaged some more. "Huh. Could've sworn I had some panzerwaffels in there… you ever had those, Lena? They're biscuits, but they're so hard you could armor a Juggernaut with 'em. They crunch up super nicely though, and they actually taste like cookies."

Lena shook her head. Papa probably ate them a few times, though. And when she thought that, suddenly there was nothing else she could possibly have wanted.

"I thought for sure I had some. I never leave base without a packet."

"Ah, yeah, sorry Captain," said the shorter girl keeping watch by the window. Kaie, Lena remembered. She pulled a green foil package out of her pocket, already ripped open to reveal a few tan-colored biscuits. Just a few; the package was about half-empty.

"I got hungry, so…"

"So you pickpocketed me?"

"I said I was sorry," Kaie said, not looking very sorry. "You can have them back."

"You ate half of them!"

"In my defense, they taste really good with chocolate."

Lena's belly chose that moment to rumble again. Loudly. The two sisters stopped bickering, both turning to her with comical slowness.

"Um… do you have any more chocolate?" Lena asked. Chocolate on biscuits sounded better than heaven to her right now.

"Sorry," Kaie said again, this time more genuinely. She clapped her hands together and bowed her head. "I, um, ate it all."

"Way to go, Kaie," Alice said. "Go disappoint another small child why don't you. You clearly have a talent for it."

"Hey, that's not fair! Lena, how old are you?"

"Um, ten?"

"And I'm twelve! So if she's a small child, then so am I, thanks."

"That doesn't mean you can't be a disappointment," Alice pointed out.

"I thought you said I caused disappointment?"

Alice hummed her agreement.

The third soldier, the red-haired man, heaved a sigh. "I've got some, actually," he said, interjecting between the other two. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a square bar of foil-wrapped chocolate. "Here you go."

Lena took it with an eagerness only marginally restrained by a decade of etiquette lessons. From Alice, she regarded the half-empty packet of panzerwaffels with something close to reverence.

"Technically, since I gave Rei that chocolate in the first place, it's also a gift from me," Kaie said.

"Like hell it is."

Lena only half-listened to their bickering, a veritable stageplay of animated gestures being held in her peripheral vision. The brunt of her attention was on the food. Her hands shook at every stage: the first, of pulling a biscuit out of its packaging; the second, of unraveling the foil over the half-chocolate-bar and breaking off a piece of it, the inviting smell of sweetness of it and the instant sting of saliva in her mouth; the third, of putting the two together; and the fourth, of taking a bite.

Today had been a nightmare.

But at that first shock of sweetness, crunch and crumble of the cracker in her mouth, taste of buttery shortening and melting milk-chocolate, she managed to forget all her pain for just one moment. Her eyes lidded with satisfaction. When she opened them again she was greeted by the sight of all her friends (we're friends now, she decided, and we always will be) arguing with each other, laughing, making jokes. Seeing them happy lit an immeasurable warmth inside her.

Papa was gone. She already missed him. It felt like she always would. But right now, while she was surrounded by these kind, kind people, she could withstand that pain.

—

The time to leave came all too quickly. It was just before the dawn, as the sky melted slowly from black to blue, that they heard the helicopter in the distance, rotors chopping and engine roaring. Alice was the first. Her ears pricked and she turned to the glassless window. The smile already on her face widened a touch further.

"You hear that, Lena?"

Lena tilted her head, straining her ears until she did. She nodded.

"That means you're going home."

"Will you guys come with me?" Lena asked hopefully.

Alice blinked. Then chuckled.

"Sorry, Lena, but we can't. Maybe you're okay with us Colorata, but whoever's on that chopper won't be."

"But I can tell them you're good people!"

The older girl put her hand on Lena's hand and stroked her hair softly.

"It doesn't work that way unfortunately. And besides, even if it were possible, we can't. We all have people to come home to."

"But…" Lena's voice trailed. "But I'll miss you."

Alice's face melted in a heartbreaking grin, black eyes flashing wetly. She crouched down and gave Lena one last hug. Lena hugged her back.

"We'll miss you too. Be strong, Lena," Alice whispered. "Be the daughter your father would've been proud to raise. That's the best way you can honor him."

The chopping roar of the helicopter reached crescendo, a wave of tremor and sound that erased all others besides itself. Lena looked out the long-shattered window to see snow kicked up in powder and eddies, and looked up to see the long black shape of the helicopter hovering above the crash site two streets down. A searchlight flashed on, bathing the ground in ghostly light so bright and sudden Lena had to look away.

"Looks like your ride's here, Lena!" Alice shouted. She was smiling again. Grinning, actually. "You should go!"

"Can't you at least come with me to say goodbye?"

"I'm sorry, but no. We can't let them see us."

Lena's lip trembled. Her eyes watered again. She didn't want to say goodbye. She didn't want to go back. Not yet. Home was so big and empty sometimes, and Mama would be so sad when Lena told her what happened. She didn't want to make Mama sad. She wanted to see people smiling and laughing, like Alice always was.

"I don't want to go!" Lena cried. She knew it was the wrong thing to say. She knew she was already breaking the promise Alice asked of her - Papa wouldn't be proud to see her crying right now, stuck in place when she knew she had to go. But it was the truth all the same.

"Lena-" Alice started, before Rei put a hand on her shoulder and stepped forward.

The tall, red-haired man bent down and took Lena's hands. He put something in them and closed her fingers around it. A silver metal device, curved and round, traced with lines of glass glowing faintly blue.

"Hold onto this," Rei said. "It's called a Para-RAID. You'll never be alone as long as you have it."

"What do you mean?" Lena asked.

Rei pointed out three buttons. "Press this one to turn it on, this one to turn it off. Press this one to talk - when you get home, press that button, put it on your cheek, and say hello. We'll be waiting."

Understanding dawned in Lena's eyes. She nodded strongly, fingers tightening on the small chunk of curved metal.

"And don't show it to anyone, do you understand? Not. One. Person!"

Lena nodded seriously.

"Now go! Quickly, before they think you died too!"

Lena nodded again, holding the cool metal shape in her hands. She took one last look at everyone, all their faces. Alice who was smiling even now, Kaie who wasn't, and Rei who was, but looked sad and distant all the same. She committed them to memory. Then she shoved Rei's device into her shirt and ran as quickly as she could, past the doorway, into the hallway and out onto the snow-slicked street. She refused to look back. If she did, she wouldn't have the strength to stop herself from turning around and running right back.

The spotlight turned to her and the blinding light burned her eyes. She stumbled, tripped and fell. The first place her hands went was not to the snow to stop her fall, but to where she'd hidden Rei's device in her shirt to keep it from falling out. Because in that moment his promise was more important to her than keeping herself from being hurt.

She could stand a little pain if it meant she'd never be alone.

Welcome to Act 2! Now introducing Lena.

Things get interesting from here. Until now, I've mostly been at liberty to tell my own story, since canon doesn't offer that much on the Empire/Federacy at this point in the timeline, which basically lets me do my own thing. But now that we've hit the Republic, there's a lot more to think about. Canon's stayed the same in some ways, but changed a lot in others. Just the absence of Para-RAID has interesting implications for how Processors fight and the way their Handlers interact with them. It's been fun to think about. and annoying, because it's a fair bit of work. funnoying?

- Verbosity