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Being moody wasn’t in Catrines nature, she also hated that whole moody teenager meme.
But here she was sitting in Yoyogi park having walked out of the house. Walked, not stormed out mind you, there was a difference.
Leaning her head back she thought about how she had come to this point. Her beloved grandmother had made one of her rare visits to Crystal Tokyo spending most of her time as Head of school in the Factuality of Robotics at the Hiroshima Institute of Technology. The visit had started out well, with a family meal, some competitive game playing and general catching up between mother and daughter and grandmother and granddaughter. The nature of visit changed shortly after however, grandma had become interested in her grades and mentioning that with Catrines uncle finally moving out that was spare rooms in their house in Tadanoumi and then she had started talking about Bio-sciences course at the university a subject that Catrine had been interested in. It was at that point the penny finally dropped.
Mum and Dad had never been happy with her signing up for the hardsuit corps trainee program and their disapproval and worries had only grown worse after incident at the spaceport. Now it had become obvious that her mother and roped in her grandmother into attempting to draw her from that path.
“I am feeling a bit stiff. I think I will got for a walk to see if that loosed me up at bit” She had committed and got up and heading for the door.
“Be back for six” had called her mother. “We are having Grandma’s curry tonight.”
“Ok.” Catrine had called shooting her mother a ‘I know what you're up to’ look which her mother either didn’t see or ignored.
So here she was feeling alternatively angry and guilty. Then after leaving the house she had discovered phone in her pocket had gone flat, cutting her off from contacting anyone to talk to it all about. Catrine leaned her head back and looked unto the sky and uttered words that practically every human has spoken though out time.
“Why me?”
- Observation Drone 8291-A - Subject Osaka Catrine - UNKNOWN FAILURE MODE - WARNING Contrograv drive Disabled - Location paper.retiring.earl - Request replacement and pickup -
“A penny for them?” came a voice to Catrine’s left.
With surprise she looked across and sitting next to her was purple haired woman in a frilly blue and white maids dress with what appeared to be robotic rabbit ears on her head.
“I am sorry?” said Catrine.
“I saw you looking unhappy, depressed, worried, so I thought. I the great Tabane Shinonono would come over and and try and help you out!” The woman said leading forward and pushing her rather impressive cleavage into Catrine’s eye line.
“So what is it” Tabane said jumping back and causing her bust to bounce in a distracting way, “Family, school, Lovveee?” with flutting eyelids.
Flushing slightly, Catrine weakly replied “All of those.”
“Oooh.” Tabane replied clapping her hands. “Tell me more.” Her robotic ears twitched. “I am all ears.
Surprising herself Catrine found herself telling the whole tale to this eccentric woman, who listened attentively.
“So if get this correctly, you are dating a girl with magical powers, who is friends with more magical girls and then at school your friend groups contain yet more people who are mages and your parents are not happy about that and your choices in life.”
“Thats it pretty much.” Catrine answered.
Tabane sat for a moment, tapping a finger against her lips the rabbit ear bouncing slightly in time to her tapping.
“So you don’t feel anyway inferior or unworthy in anyway being with them?”
“No, I…..” at that point realisation dropped on Catrines head. Was she worthy, was she good enough.
“Ohh.”
Tabane smiled and stood up and leaned over to look at the now depressed looking Catrine in the eye.
“So what are you going to do now?”
“I don’t know.” Catrine replied.
“Good, because I don’t either!” said Tabane spinning about, then she stopped and looked at the crestfallen figure.
“Butttt how about I give you a present to cheer you up.” She said.
Catrine looked up.
“A present but..” she stopped as she felt something drop into her lap. Looking down she saw what looked like a plastic carrot had appeared there. The carrot popped open to reveal a what appeared to be a necklace. A fine linked silver with a disk of crystal at the end.
“Here you go, a present made by me Tabane Shinonono.”
Catrine took it out of its case and looked at sparkling in the sunlight.
“Its beautiful.” Said Catrine admiringly and then coming to her senses. “I cannot except this its..” The woman was gone. She stood up and looked around, no sign of the woman. She sat back down
“Well that was odd.” Catrine commented to herself. “What is with me that attracts the eccentrics.” Mentally she reminded herself that Crystal Tokyo is full of eccentrics.
She looked at the necklace and then put in her pocket.
“Coffee, I need coffee.” Said Catrine to herself and walked off. She felt a bit depressed but at the same time she felt some of the weight had lifted from her shoulders. She knew what the one of the problems was and her fathers sayings came to her ‘Knowing what the problem is, is 90% of the way of solving it.’
Leaving the park she headed towards the station and Cafe Barney. She was just passing under the Yoyogi-Hachiman tower, when an alarm caused her to jump to her left an emergency gravity projector came to life. She looked up and saw a figure falling from the tower, with what appeared to be a window.
The projector came around pointed at the falling figure and then burst into flames.
“No.” She thought and unconsciously began running towards the falling figure.
“If I had my hard suit I could catch them.”
‘Beginning setup sequence.. Done.’
‘Raijin Initialisation … Done’
‘Deploy IS Frame.’
Catrine found herself flying though the air. A HUD appeared in her eye-line with flight path information, without thinking she willed herself forward and with a small sonic boom flew upwards above the falling person and then dived down to catch them in her arms and then flipped over and shedding speed landed on the ground with the unconscious child she had caught in her arms. She carefully put the child down and began to look at herself. This was no hardsuit was wearing some kind of white and grey exoframe.
At that point three hardsuits flew in.
“Catrine is that you?” Came Ran Mizuno's voice as suits came near.
“Ran,” answered Catrine. “Yes its… “ her eyes opened wide. “No, no, too much.”
Ran was just in time to catch her when the frame disappeared as she fell unconscious.
Catrine never has had a family name attached to her from all the reading of the story but we do know she is a descendent of Naru Osaka (Eternal City, Crystal Tokyo: Part fourteen, Lest we forget’) So I make the assumption that the family name has been maintained.
—-
Having someone followed around by an Observation Drone seems at odds in the very utopian setting of Crystal Tokyo. But Catrine is a prospective Hardsuit pilot and is dating a a child of the Senshi family. This would make her a very attractive target to Terrorist organisations like “Earth First”. So I can see she would be asked of she would permit being monitored for her own safety.
—-
Raijin
Pilot : Catrine Osaku
Generation : Unknown
Core number : Unknown
Combat type : All-Rounder
Armaments: jō (Melee), Laser Rifle (Ranged)
Manifacturer : Tabane Shinonono
Catrines IS unit is currently in default setting, so it has flight capabilities, shield and two default weapons. It closed-form is necklace.