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The first time Kazumi really took an interest in the world outside her home was December 20th, 2015: the day the news of the Luxion's possible destruction reached Earth.
She had seen the bold headline on her father's paper from across the table at breakfast - SPACE CRUISER LUXION LOST? - but kept her head down and ate her rice like a good girl. Her father said nothing about the news, but there were new lines between his eyes when he put the paper down and went off to work. Kazumi snatched up the paper and snuck it into her schoolbag in the brief gap between her mother seeing her father off and coming back to scold her about getting ready for school.
There wasn't much information in the article; the survivors wouldn't reach Earth for another month. The only reason they had as much as they did was because Admiral Takaya had released a small pod with a bare minimum of data into warp just before the ship shattered completely. At least, the reporters assumed it had shattered completely. All they really knew was that the Luxion had taken massive damage all along her length, had lost hull integrity in multiple spots, and had been declared lost by Admiral Takaya ten minutes afterwards. From there an evacuation had proceeded, saving an unknown number of spacemen. Admiral Takaya had gone down with the ship.
Kazumi read the article three times straight through, then tucked it back into her bag. She went to school, where the sinking of the Luxion was the only topic on anyone's lips. It was the first time a major Earth ship had been lost since mankind first left the Solar System. The teachers didn't even try to teach their classes.
Kazumi pursed her lips in disapproval, and made a note of the pages they were supposed to have covered in their textbooks. She refused to take part in any of the gossip. But the paper sat there in her bag, drawing her attention even when she tried to catch up on her studies.
A mysterious shipwreck. A lost admiral. Silent explosions in the vastness of space. The romantic grandeur of it slipped under her skin and teased at her whenever she tried to focus on her mundane, everyday life.
If she had been there, on the decks, facing the harsh void...what would she have done?
Kazumi didn't know. But she burned to find out.
News kept trickling in through the rest of winter and into spring. The ship of survivors arrived in late January, carrying a miserable, huddled collection of men who gave multiple contradicting stories of the fateful instant. The observatory in Palomar confirmed the explosion via the gravitational lensing of the ether waves, along with the reflections of multiple large, unknown objects. The newspapers that had been questioning Admiral Takaya's judgement immediately switched to playing up the new threat to humanity:
Space monsters.
In March 2016, Kazumi stood before her parents and declared her intention to join the military.
It wasn't an uncommon desire. Half her class was already filling out applications for military school. Talk of which middle schools led into the best high schools that led into the best colleges suddenly shifted to which ones were attached to the military. It was the new thing to do.
So her father smiled at her over his paper and praised her for her patriotism. "The Amano family has always produced good soldiers," he bragged to her mother, "and there's no reason our little Kazumi can't stand on a bridge with the best of them, even if she is a girl. It's not the 20th century anymore! I know a few men in the admiralty, so if her grades stay as good as they have been," a slight chuckle at the idea Kazumi's grades would ever slip, "we can get her posted as an aide for an officer on one of the new ships they're planning - the Exelion or something - anyway, she can join up as soon as she graduates from high school. Won't that be something grand!"
Her mother, a decorated veteran of the Third World War, smiled at Kazumi and silently sipped her tea.
"I want to be a pilot," Kazumi said.
"An aide at eighteen, a command by twenty-five, and by then you'll probably have met a good man- what?"
"I want to be a pilot," she repeated.
Her father's paper crumpled, revealing his shocked face. Her mother's teacup hit the saucer with a loud clink. They both stared at her.
The next few minutes were very noisy.
Her father raved. "You can't be a pilot! The Amano family produces great men - commanders, admirals! What do pilots do?!"
Her mother stood between them, looking worried. "Dear, please. And Kazumi, pilots go out into space alone. It's a very hard job...what if you get shot down? Cosmo Attackers are so fragile..."
"I know." Kazumi had done her research. "I still want to be a pilot. It's dangerous on the bridge of a ship too, isn't it? Admiral Takaya didn't return."
"It's a physical job, piloting," her father growled. "Do you think you can do it? They need to be strong, and fast, with split-second reactions. They have tests. If you don't pass, you don't get in."
"I'll train."
That was, more or less, the end of the conversation. Her father gave her a training regimen and swore if she couldn't pass the physical by the time she entered high school she was going into command, no ifs or buts, and her mother patted her on the shoulder and told her to do her best but she could always stop. For the first time in her short life, Kazumi felt a gap between her and her parents, a gap as big as the void of space. They didn't understand that she had no intention of stopping.
The space monsters were a threat to humanity. Everyone knew that. They needed the best and brightest of Earth to fight against them. Everyone knew that too. And so she'd train until she was the best, and could protect all of Earth.
Every day, she got up and stretched, then ran around the block fifteen times in weighted shoes. She did push-ups and pull-ups. She lifted weights. She trained her reflexes by having a friend jury-rig a control panel and running fake attack sequences. (She tried to train by catching falling objects, but her mother stopped her when she tried to do it with a knife.) She read every bit of information that was publicly available about fighting in space, and a few secret documents her father's connections brought. When the RX project was announced later that year, she shifted her efforts to working with mobile weapons. By the time she entered the Okinawa Girls' High School she was prepared in every way for piloting.
The first time she activated the machine and took a step, she fell over.
She sat there in the cockpit, monitor dead, and tried to figure out what had happened. Her feet on the pedals, her hands on the controller...and yet, she had fallen like a child taking its first steps.
It was a lie, wasn't it? Or she was, and she wasn't meant to be a pilot after all. How could all her preparations be for nothing? How could she have worked so hard and be met with betrayal?
The shock twisted into a grim resolve within seconds. She had prepared. She was ready. This wouldn't stop her. She picked up the manual and read it by the emergency lights. She had forgotten to shift the auto-balancer to WALK mode, and it had failed to catch up with her. A simple mistake. She would never make it again.
Kazumi Amano wanted to prove herself and protect the Earth. And she wanted to do it with her own two hands. If those hands were mechanical, it didn't make them any less hers.
Ota Koichiro regained full consciousness on February 3rd, 2016, a month and a half after the Luxion had been destroyed. The survivors had made it back to Earth two weeks earlier. He didn't remember it.
The nurse, a pretty young woman who seemed to have been chosen for her harmless look, told him, with absolute gentleness, that his eye was gone forever. She didn't mention his leg, which Ota took as a signal of how well it was doing: namely, badly. Damn doctors were always too scared to tell patients the truth; as if he hadn't known it was going to be bad ever since the beam had carved through his thigh.
He bore the remaining questions about his health with ill grace, then was refused when he asked for a newspaper. At that he forced himself upright and hurled the little vase with flowers against the wall. What the hell could a newspaper do to him? He'd been dragged out of hell by the sacrifice of a better man and left crippled for life! This was as bad as it got!
The pretty young nurse fled, but Ota had his newspaper a few minutes later.
He read it in angry silence. The brass couldn't get their heads out of their asses long enough to coordinate a bake sale, let alone a defense of Earth. What the hell had Sasaki and Nishomoto told them? They barely knew what they were up against, except that they were big, fast, and completely alien. Cosmo Attackers weren't going to cut it. New ships might not cut it. They needed something new.
The doctor came in then, and Ota managed to wring the truth about his leg from the man. Basically, it was a useless lump of flesh. It would, in the words of the doctor, "take a miracle for you to ever walk again."
Ota nodded. There wasn't any point in protesting the confirmation. He got the doc to agree to physical training as soon as he could sit up unassisted, as long as he agreed to lay down and rest for the rest of the day.
So it took until the next day for Ota to start drafting letters to everyone who had ever owed Admiral Takaya a favor.
Turned out being a survivor of the Luxion brought a few perks, mostly in high command not immediately telling him to go piss up a rope. Unfortunately, that didn't mean they were listening to him. Ota could tell when he was getting the run-around; he'd done it himself more than once. All he could do was sit, fume, and then write more letters. He wasn't even entirely sure what he was proposing yet, but damned if he'd let that stop him. He was going to be in the centre of whatever project was going to strike back at those monsters. He owed Admiral Takaya that much.
In the meantime, he trained. The doctor had given him a training regimen, Ota promptly doubled everything on it. He could do it. If he couldn't, what the hell had he been saved for?
It started out with assisted standing, and he fell over. He dragged himself back up, snarling with pain and frustration, before the nurse could get over to help him. He didn't need any damn help, he needed to get stronger. His arms burned, his good leg went numb, and there was a sharp pain in his chest before they dragged him back to bed, but he had done it. He'd stood upright, braced on rails, just for a second.
The next week he took a halting step, still braced on the rails. The doctor made him rest afterwards and gave him an earful about pushing himself too hard, but Ota wasn't listening. He was doing it. He'd show the brass, the monsters, the whole damn universe that they couldn't stop him.
It was funny, it was Anno who came up with the idea for the RX Project. He'd always figured the kid for a lazy good-for-nothing, but he had imagination. Meet the enemy's infantry on more equal footing. Use a machine. A giant machine that would fight like a man in the emptiness of space.
Ota took the idea and pushed it on anyone who would listen. He made the nurses wheel him out to Imperial Military Headquarters so he could pound on doors and tables in person. He bullied, pleaded, and reasoned. He kept fighting until the plan was approved later that year, the same week he made a full circuit around the room on his cane.
He settled into advising the RX Project, along with Anno and Sadamoto, and kept training until he could walk around reasonably well for a couple hours at a time. He learned all the ins and outs of the RX machines he'd never be able to pilot for real - even if there was an inertial canceler that could keep him from passing out after five minutes, his leg just wasn't up to real combat - and shouted at the new cadets who would be shipping out to Silver Star for space combat training. In the evenings he went out drinking with Anno and Sadamoto, talking about what to do next, how to make something even better than the RX Project. Those little piddly machines wouldn't be enough against the gigantic monsters that had sunk the Luxion. Humanity needed an edge.
Anno was the one that showed the signs first. Then Sadamoto. They got paler and weaker, they swayed when they walked, they coughed up blood. "Space radiation syndrome," the doctors said. "Incurable. The lifeboat must've been improperly shielded."
"You all have it."
Pretty soon Ota showed the signs as well. His hands shook when he tried to sign documents. There was the constant taste of blood in the back of his throat. If he pushed himself for too long he'd fall over and not be able to get up for a long time. It was 2018, and the doctors gave him a year to live.
He called them a bunch of quacks and told them to do whatever it took, he was going to stay alive. There was a scribbled batch of notes on his desk labeled "Gunbuster Project" and he wasn't going to die until it was done. He told them that.
They sighed and shook their heads at his foolishness, but Ota held on. He wasn't going to die. Not yet.
By late 2020, life had once again settled into a routine. Wake up. Strap on the crutch. Struggle into the bathroom, vomit up blood. Rinse out mouth, stare into the mirror with teeth bared. It would take more than that to beat Ota Koichiro. So what if his body crumbled around him? He had been nothing but a corpse possessed by a vengeful spirit ever since the Luxion. That the spirit was his own was no matter.
What mattered was that the spirit had no intention of leaving until it had finished its business.
The Exelion had launched on July 7th, 2022, to everyone’s excitement. 158 ship days later, Noriko was lying in the clinic bed, unable to move. Jung and Onee-sama had both left.
Noriko sniffled and pressed her hand against her eyes, jarring the bruises on her arm. They hurt. Everything hurt. She'd been working so hard, and-!
Jung had been nice about it. That was the worst part. She'd pulled Noriko's RX into the elevator as gently as possible and kept up a running stream of chatter all the way down to the hanger. Then she'd climbed over to open Noriko's cockpit herself and just as gently helped Noriko out of the machine and to the medical bay. She'd stayed around the entire time until Onee-sama got there, stroking Noriko's shoulder and singing a song in English or German or Russian - Noriko was no good with foreign languages. Just like everything else.
It would've been better if she'd been mean. If she'd laughed, or mocked Noriko, or left her out there - then she'd be a rival, someone to fight against. Noriko could gather her determination and keep fighting just to prove Jung wrong, like how Joe had fought Rikiishi in Ashita no Joe. But Jung treated Noriko like she was: a fragile little girl. Someone to protect. Helpless. Useless.
Noriko pulled on herself tighter. She'd trained so hard! She'd never wanted to feel like that again, when she'd waited and waited and waited for Smith to come back and he never did. It was her fault. She had been on defense. She hadn't protected him like a partner was supposed to.
But when she went out into space, everything she knew flew straight out of her brain and floated among the stars. Her legs turned to jelly, her arms into noodles, and her brain to mush. The sensors blurred into kaleidoscopes and the system sounds pounded like thunder.
Onee-sama had said she'd just kept practicing until the movements were second nature, and then even space wasn't a problem. So Noriko had practiced and practiced. She'd woken up before the bell every morning and done two laps around the ship. Then she did drills with Coach for an hour before and after breakfast, then combat study, then more drills, and then she was on duty for four hours. And once she was off she worked out at the gym for another three hours, then drills until curfew. She collapsed into bed every day, covered with bruises - and for what? So she could go to pieces in a sparring match?
Noriko pushed herself up off the bed and wiped her eyes. Hone your body, hone your heart. Her father had said that, in her few, blurred memories of him. Coach had said the same thing. Noriko was starting to feel like her heart was made of glass, or oranges, or something like that, instead of the cool steel that Onee-sama and Coach had. She sniffled again and left the medical bay without looking where she was going. Her feet knew how to get back to quarters.
Her feet took her to Launch Bay #7. The one that never opened. The one where Gunbuster lived.
She stared at the half-completed giant and felt very, very small. It - he? - towered over her like a skyscraper, or the statue of a god. Gunbuster looked smooth, sleek, powerful. Everything she wasn't.
All the engineers were further up, working on something in Gunbuster's gigantic chest. The armor plates were open, revealing a skeleton of carbon-alloy around a tangle of wires: Gunbuster's heart, laid bare for people to poke and prod at. Right then, Noriko felt a jolt of sympathy.
She took a few steps forward and laid her hand on the sweeping arch of metal that made up Gunbuster's foot. It was cool, and rougher than it looked at a distance. She could feel the tiny, almost-invisible imperfections in the metal, like human skin rendered in steel. She stroked it, gently, and laid her over-heated cheek against it.
"Does it hurt?" she murmured against the cool metal. "When they open you up like that?" She sniffled a little, again. "They think they can just open you up and tinker with you and then you'll do just what they want. Is that right, Gunbuster?"
A low reverberation ran through Gunbuster to Noriko's cheek and she jumped back in surprise. She looked around wildly - no one was there. She laid her hand back on the massive foot and looked up. Somewhere high above her, it looked like some of the workers were arguing, but Noriko had no idea what they were arguing about. She leaned her head against Gunbuster again.
"Your heart's yours. Don't forget that. And if you train it right, it'll be your greatest weapon. Even...even if it hurts." She pressed her face closer into the metal. "I...I don't know if I can do this, Gunbuster. I want to work with you, I want to fight the space monsters, but I- I-"
There was another huge reverberation, one that went all the way through her body. "Keep at it, is that what you're saying?" she asked, and there was a smaller rumble. She sniffled a bit and wiped at her eyes. "But...but I'm so hopeless..."
Silence. Noriko looked up again, at the man-made god pinned open and helpless. She pressed her lips together. Here was something she knew about, and a flicker of fire lapped inside her chest. "Endure it, Gunbuster," she said firmly. "We all have to endure it. We might not look like much now, but...but..."
She didn't know how to end, but she felt the giant rumble against her skin.
December 11th, 2058. Wednesday. Cold and rainy. Kimiko opened the door to her daughter's cramped apartment and stepped inside, clicking her force umbrella off as she did. "Hello? Takami?"
"Mom!" Takami's face rolled into view at the end of the hallway, grinning. She'd cut her hair again. "Just come on in, sorry it's a mess. I only just got back, and Tadahiro never cleans up anything, the lazy pig..." There was a crash and Takami yelped. "Whoops! Sorry Kaede! You're all right, aren't you girl?"
Kaede didn't seem hurt by whatever it was, since Kimiko could hear her giggling from the hall as she slipped off her shoes. The apartment was a mess, with jackets piled up on top of crates in the hallway, dust in the corners, and decorations still hanging up from Exelion Day. Kimiko sighed. When she was a girl no housewife worth her salt would allow this. But, she supposed, Tadahiro wasn't a housewife. One had to make allowances. She headed straight for the kitchen to put the groceries down, and took a look at Takami over the counter. "You look well," she said.
Takami gave her another grin from where she was laying on the floor. She'd dropped her bright Space Mercantile Fleet uniform for an old t-shirt and sweatpants already, but she still had her ranking bracelet on her right wrist. She had one of those new light-energy controller sticks in her hand and was using it to zoom Kaede around the living room on a floating disk, much to the toddler's delight. "So do you, mom. New skin treatment?"
"Flatterer." Kimiko started putting groceries away in the preservation cupboards, updating the expiration lock as she went with the fluidity of long practice. "No, I'm just happy to see my daughter and granddaughter again. You were gone for six months."
"That's not that long, especially not for going all around the solar system. It's not like the old days."
Kimiko's hand stilled on a jar of miso. "No. It's not."
The silence was broken only by Kaede's continuing shrieks and giggles. It lay upon them, heavy like the void of space and the equal gaps of time and distance.
"Sorry, mom." Takami’s voice was quiet, barely audible over her daughter's.
"It's all right. Things changed so quickly, with warp getting better and better every year..." Kimiko found the old, worn apron she'd bequeathed to Takami and slipped it on, the cloth still perfectly aligned to her form. She sighed and started pulling out ingredients for lunch: oyakodon. "Do you know that Kazumi Ota-" Amano-senpai, she still thought, no matter how many years it had been, "-was only born a year before me?" She tapped the rice cooker to start three cups of rice, which it measured out and cooked automatically. Such convenience.
"Coach! Ah, there's a blast from the past!" Takami swung Kaede into her arms with a flip of the disk and snuggled the little girl enthusiastically. "You don't remember, Kaede, but when Mama was a cute little high-school girl, she wanted nothing more than to be like her Coach. She was elegant, and cool, and a great pilot..." She sighed to herself. "That was a long time ago."
"Before Kaede was born," Kimiko added, amused. "That's probably why she doesn't remember."
"Nope! But you know, Kaede, that Coach saved the galaxy? It’s true!" Takami tapped at Kaede's nose, eliciting further giggles. "Her and Auntie Noriko flew off in Gunbuster so that all of us could grow up safe and strong. They fought the evil space monsters across the stars until they went to the centre of the galaxy, where they faced them all down in one final grand, glorious battle. And then!" She tossed Kaede up into the air, caught her again, and rolled them across the tatami floor. "They won! And we're safe forever!"
"Forever..." Kimiko started chopping chicken. Ten years of peace felt like forever, compared to the terrifying rush of those days. It had seemed like the war would only ever end with the death of humanity, leaving Earth cracked and broken as a symbol of their hubris. She'd worked on Buster Machine No. 3 just like everyone else in the entire world, packing together bits of electronics in the little row house they'd moved to after Noriko had left forever. It never took much to send her back there, back to the sweltering heat and freezing cold where she'd snapped and soldered and done her part to save Earth.
"Face the picture! Okay, now can you bow, Kaede? Yep, bow! Good girl! And say 'Thank you Auntie Noriko and Coach'. Yes, good girl!"
"I wonder how long that's going to last," Kimiko said over her shoulder. Takami and Kaede were kneeling before the little altar - not the central part, with Takami's father, but the little wing on the side everyone had nowadays, with Noriko and Amano-senpai's pictures on either side of a stylized Gunbuster head. She had one herself. It felt a bit odd to have the standard one - she'd known Noriko, the slightly klutzy, easily embarrassed crybaby with a bone-deep determination - but she did want to have something. Takami's old tanzaku hung on it: "I hope Mom and Auntie Noriko can meet again". It seemed appropriate.
"Forever and ever, I hope," Takami responded. "We owe them that much. And, well...it does feel like they're out there, watching over us. You get a near miss, or find a space monster corpse, and you think 'They're protecting us'. No crew will go out without at least a picture."
"Is that right?" Kimiko went back to chopping chicken, feeling a bit happy and a bit sad all at once. The conversation turned to Takami's trip, and what was happening with the colonies at Mars, and the latest gossip from Earth. Lunch was served, and Takami took Kaede out for a walk. Kimiko begged off. Her joints didn't like the rain anymore.
With her daughter and granddaughter out, Kimiko stretched and started to clean up. But before she started washing, the shrine caught her eye again. Slowly, without thinking about it, she found a match, and some incense, and carefully lit it in front of Noriko and Amano-senpai. She knelt there and looked at them.
It was Noriko's official Space Force picture, with her headband. She looked just like how Kimiko remembered her - frozen in time. Amano-senpai was older, Takami's Coach instead of Kimiko's upperclasswoman, but she was frozen as well.
"Are you still out there?" Kimiko murmured. "They never confirmed your deaths. Are you out there, watching over the people you saved?" She pressed her hands together. "I...I want to believe you are. I want to believe that was you I heard. Even if you're not coming home with the rest of the fleet...even if Tamaki and Kaede will be dead by the time you come back...at least make it home. We're all waiting for you."
Jung didn't know the date. They still counted years and months and days in the old way, but it felt like nonsense, unreal. She still half expected - half wanted - to wake up to it still being the 21st century, with the space monsters bearing down on Earth. At least she could fight space monsters.
Twenty years ago the Galactic Core Assault Fleet had been welcomed back as heroes from a war that had already faded far from living memory. Over two hundred years had passed back on Earth while they limped their way home, warp engines burning out like guttering candles. Captain Tashiro had led the remaining officers down the deck, saluted the politely-smiling new leaders, and then died, mission complete.
The descendants of those they had saved were grateful for their efforts, effusively so, but they were different, so different from the friends and families that had been left behind. The children now didn't even know war between humans, let alone between humans and aliens. They'd spread out across the solar system, so that going to Jupiter II (now just Jupiter, you had to remind them about the long-gone core of Buster Machine 3) didn't mean more than going to the store. Everyone could live in the same time.
It was the world Noriko and Kazumi had sacrificed themselves for, and Jung didn't belong there. She belonged back there, in a Buster Machine...why hadn't she stayed? Why had she let them go off alone? They always took what she wanted. Sometimes she'd spend all day weeping and cursing them, hating those soft, sad smiles that had convinced her to turn back. She belonged with them, not with these bizarre, foreign children.
But she had promised, and Jung Freud kept her promises. So she lived, and worked, as best she could, even if the children saw her more as an odd relic than a useful, productive human being.
She advised the Imperial Space Force, mostly. Or the "Buster Corps", as they were more commonly called, since humanity had abandoned everything but Buster Machines and lighter derivatives. No one was sure if they were even really needed anymore, but it was hard for humans to give up entirely the tools of war. "Imperial" was a relic of terminology, the rest of the Terran Empire having fallen into dust almost as soon as the news of their victory had reached home. Jung didn't understand the political systems that underlaid the new world - capitalism and communism both had crumbled as well - but she did understand the basic ideas of tactics and strategy. Even if they were just humouring her, which they probably were, it was something she could do.
Jung got up each morning to something that she had insisted on sounding like the ringing of an old alarm clock, ate a breakfast that had appeared out of thin air, made from who-knew-what, and took a bicycle to work, because some things didn't change. Every day she passed by the statue. Every day she glanced at it, felt her stomach twist, and kept pedaling.
It was right and proper that they should have statues, of course. Jung had been happy to see the first one. They were all over the solar system - monuments to the heroines that saved the human race. They were usually ignored, like most statues, but every so often Jung caught a child looking at them. Those sights warmed her heart.
Just...you didn't put up statues of the living. Seeing Noriko and Kazumi like that, frozen in an image of idealized heroism they never had in life...it reminded her every day that they were gone.
Noriko had never had a bust like that either. Sometimes Jung imagined showing it to them and getting to tease Noriko about what their descendants thought a proper space heroine looked like. Most of the time she just shook her head and pedaled on, focusing entirely on the physical sensation of riding a bike to keep from thinking.
One day she arrived at what was still technically Imperial Space Force Headquarters, even if hardly anyone remembered the full name anymore. Her assistant/keeper, Lachis, greeted her cheerfully, as always. "Good morning, Special Adviser Freud!" She was always careful to use correct early-21st century words. Jung suspected she had been a historian previously, but hadn't ever asked.
"Good morning, Lachis," Jung said. She had never gotten used to the young woman's naturally bright green hair and her uniform didn't look anything like any uniform Jung had ever seen before either. But that was how they did things now. She rolled her shoulders and got ready for another day of sitting in meetings. "What’s on the schedule for today?"
Lachis tapped at her electronic notepad. "Let's see...oh, you'll like this," she said, like Jung was a child being taken on a field trip, "they're awakening the latest Buster Machine today. Number 7."
A part of Jung wanted to protest that Buster Machines were machines, and were activated, not awakened, but it was easier to just nod crisply and follow where Lachis led her. They walked through a maze of automatic pathways and miniature warp gates and arrived not at the expansive hangar Jung expected, but a small hospital room. Jung stopped at the door and watched, confused.
It was clean and bright, and the delicate computers integrated into the walls were all on full display, not tucked away like they were when not in use. Around them white-coated scientists stood talking in low voices, occasionally glancing at what lay in the centre. Jung couldn't get a good look at it from the door, but it looked almost like a bed. It was hard to tell, because surrounding it was a bold blaze of pure white light stretching from the ceiling to the floor.
Lachis coughed and Jung finally stepped forward, nodding briefly at the scientists. She vaguely recognized a few faces and exchanged nods with them. The rest glanced at the Galactic Core Assault Fleet badge on her shoulder and looked away again. They didn't know what to do with her either.
Slowly, circling the room, Jung came closer to the bed in the middle. It was fantastic in its simplicity, so far from what Jung still pictured as "modern". No wires, no buttons, no dials. The surface was smooth and flat, the edges soft and rounded. It looked like a toy. Like a bed for the most expensive doll ever made.
Lachis gently grabbed Jung's sleeve and held her back from approaching the bed. Not time yet, then. Jung stopped and waited at military rest, the only person in the room that still knew how.
A scientist got up and made a short speech that Jung mostly understood; more or less that this was a great step forward, brilliant work, this was just the first awakening - that word again - and the full unveiling would come later, but everyone please enjoy their first look at Buster Machine Number 7!
The light fell from the bed, revealing...a young woman? No, more like a doll. Perfectly smooth, featureless skin, delicately molded limbs, long, pale pink hair. A life-size doll in this gigantic doll's bed. She opened her eyes.
The scientist was going on, and Jung understood less and less as the new technical vocabulary increased. By straining her ears she caught the gist of it: Buster Machine Number 7 was human-size, fully sentient, and indestructible. She had her own degeneracy reactor. She had a miniature warp engine. She had...something about weapons and the original Gunbuster, probably a favorable comparison. She had full control over an army of smaller Buster drones. She was a perfect, immortal guardian. A man-made goddess.
Number 7 - Noriko would've called her "Nana-chan" or something - looked around herself curiously. Her eyes had crosses in them for whatever reason, but it didn't take away from how sparkling and innocent she looked. She didn't look like a goddess any more than Noriko had looked like a hero.
Jung's heart twisted. Number 7 was sentient and indestructible. She was being set up as the perfect, immortal guardian of the solar system. It was a terrible, lonely job, an awful responsibility to put on those slim shoulders. A part of Jung wanted to rebel against it - didn't we waste enough young lives already? - but another, more terrible, part of her already knew what she was going to do to this poor girl.
Not the scientists. Her. Jung Freud.
The scientist finished his speech and Jung stepped forward. "A wonderful speech. All of you here have contributed so much to this project, and made it a spectacular success." Pause for scattered applause and nods of acknowledgement. Number 7 grinned in delight. Jung wasn't sure if she could even understand the archaic words. "One can almost say this is an old-fashioned christening ceremony, and you all are Number 7's fairy godmothers, giving her a surfeit of wonderful gifts." Another pause. Scattered laughter. "But I'm afraid that if this is a christening ceremony, then I have to be the witch. Because there's another gift this -" Machine? Girl? Goddess? "- Number 7 needs, and I'm afraid I'm going to provide it."
Silence. Number 7 looked at Jung and it was impossible to tell if she understood. Jung swallowed and stepped forward again, until she was right in front of those impossibly wide eyes. "A mission," she said, softly. "A mission lasting thousands of years. Number 7, I charge you in the name of the Imperial Space Force to take up this sacred mission. You must listen, and remember the heroes, and when they return..." A lump grew in her throat. She'd hoped. She'd prayed. But she'd talked with the best scientists the new world had to offer.
She'd never live long enough to see them again. They still couldn't live in the same time. Not them.
"...tell them-"
"Them?" Number 7's voice was light and sweet.
"The greatest heroes the Earth has ever known." And slowly, painfully, Jung told her. About the high-minded young woman who sacrificed her love for the Earth, and about the ordinary, clumsy little crybaby who never gave up, who gained a Buster Machine and brought forth a miracle. The story of the girl that became a god, for the goddess that looked like a girl.
"You have to tell them. Promise? You have to tell them, tell Noriko: 'Welcome home'."