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⭐️ PRE SERIES
- No wonder I'm different from everyone else. Everyone like me is here.
- In all the years I lived there, it only snowed once.
⭐️ BOOK ONE
- The destruction of Beijing Beta
⭐️ BOOK TWO
Encouraging HJS - "What makes you think you can decide what's defective and what's correct?" (CH 29) combine with her operating the mech ("My old man was humoring me. Here. A noise filter. Try it." CH 41) + ("Girl, clear out slowly. Slow down, don't be nervous. You're the most talented student I've ever seen.. JSH stops the mech, CH 41)
"Young man, can you fix that screen?" (CH32 -33)
Stopping the riot with the sight of Beijng-B. "Listen to me. Listen. To. Me."
"Sc...scan for me." (CH48) + "Stars can be reborn, but what about you?" (CH 49)
⭐️ BOOK THREE
Conversation with Foucalt - Don't try and fool me with those words of yours. (CH 61, P19 - P20)
The Space Station funeral (CH 65:57)
"Rescuing" LJH from the city ladies (Ch69:84) + Fortune Telling
"Are we just animals in your eyes?!" - William Yu, the Rainbow Virus (72:102)
"Zhanlu... give LBX full administrative access." (78:144)
"Lin Jingheng, did you know you're a heartless piece of garbage?" (79:154)
⭐️ BOOK FOUR
- Turan and the sedative / the death of Lin Jingheng
⭐️ BOOK FIVE
- No wonder I'm different from everyone else. Everyone like me is here.
- In all the years I lived there, it only snowed once.
⭐️ BOOK ONE
- The destruction of Beijing Beta
⭐️ BOOK TWO
Encouraging HJS - "What makes you think you can decide what's defective and what's correct?" (CH 29) combine with her operating the mech ("My old man was humoring me. Here. A noise filter. Try it." CH 41) + ("Girl, clear out slowly. Slow down, don't be nervous. You're the most talented student I've ever seen.. JSH stops the mech, CH 41)
"Young man, can you fix that screen?" (CH32 -33)
Stopping the riot with the sight of Beijng-B. "Listen to me. Listen. To. Me."
"Sc...scan for me." (CH48) + "Stars can be reborn, but what about you?" (CH 49)
⭐️ BOOK THREE
Conversation with Foucalt - Don't try and fool me with those words of yours. (CH 61, P19 - P20)
The Space Station funeral (CH 65:57)
"Rescuing" LJH from the city ladies (Ch69:84) + Fortune Telling
"Are we just animals in your eyes?!" - William Yu, the Rainbow Virus (72:102)
"Zhanlu... give LBX full administrative access." (78:144)
"Lin Jingheng, did you know you're a heartless piece of garbage?" (79:154)
⭐️ BOOK FOUR
- Turan and the sedative / the death of Lin Jingheng
⭐️ BOOK FIVE
BOOK TWO
huang jiangshu | what's defective, and whats correct?
you palm the drink you're holding - a beer - and then pop the tab to get her attention. she looks back at you, startled, says, "Headmaster Lu," and you come to sit beside her, taking out a paper cup and pouring half of the can into it as you explain it's from lin jingheng's previous stock, but it's definitely close to expiring. huang jiangshu's face shifts to a pout. "You're still so petty! If no one's going to drink it, and it's expired, can't you let me have the whole thing?"
it makes you fond, and you shake your head. ] Half a can is enough for you, kiddo. How much more do you want me to spoil you guys? If you're not going to drink it, you can give it back.
[ as you hold out your hand, predictably, she immediately takes the cup, and you sigh, breaking the silence as she drinks. ] The error rate of your homework yesterday was extremely high, and you copied the short answer question. It looks like you just puked out the whole thing in a rush, and that's never happened with you, before. Why?
[ she gets defensive, immediately - claims she didn't copy, but you point out the flaws and obvious places (source one: the fact that you know she couldn't read the book that she tried to copy from.) and then huang jiangshu sighs and gives up, downs the rest of her beer, and takes on the best popular girl poise she can manage.
"Headmaster Lu, some things can't just be achieved with hard work. Some people are just better than others. Some people are born without an arm, or a leg, some people are born to be nothing, and are destined to be nothing. For m-- for many of us, it's just like this. We were produced as defective products. I'm sorry, Headmaster Lu, teaching us to operate a mech - that's harder than teaching a hamster to jump through a ring of fire, right?"
you make a soft noise - it seems like she has more to say, and tilt your head, keeping your reaction off your face. she's referring, of course, to being vaccuocerebral. to having no ability to sync with a mech. instead, you say, placidly, ] There's no aesthetic value in watching a hamster jump through a ring of fire.
[ she gives you a look, but continues. "Since a war started, it's going to be hard for people who can't operate mechs to survive in space, right? We don't know what's going to happen, and we can't be useless and just rely on someone else for our entire lives. Operating a mech requires top-notch toughness mentally and physically, and you have to be smart enough, and have no genetic defects. No vaccuocerebrals. Don't you think this is a natural selection? To wipe out those of us that are defective, and only keeping those that are correct?"
hm. you must make a little bit of a face. she points at you with the cup. It's not talent you're lacking, you just have to work harder, and you have to study harder - that's what you wanted to say, right? Headmaster Lu, ugh, your teachers' speeches haven't changed for millions of years! I'm right, aren't I?"
you look at her for a moment, at the can of beer in your hand, and your mind reams with memories, before you reply. casually, relaxed. ] Nope. I just wanted to say I've thought only the more introverted types would reflect on society. Not you, considering your hobby's getting into fights with a broken off beer bottle.
[ huang jiangshu blushes, mouth hanging open and the fire temporarily extinguished, and you continue, calmly, turning your gaze to her face. ] Both human society and human evolution are too long, and too complicated. When you use even less than twenty years of life experience to judge it, it's like looking at one spot on a leopard to visualize the entire animal. I've already said this to you once before: the world is changing too fast, maybe once every even ten years. Can you precisely predict what the next decade is going to be like? Your whole life is going to be hundreds of years long, and if you can't even predict the next ten years, then what makes you think you can decide what's defective, and what's correct?
[ she looks - stunned. you take a slow sip of your beer, as you continue - as you think on the eight, as you think on these tiny little lives that have become your own, these four students who you still hold as close to you as you can. ] You're still little. From what I've studied, there's no proof that people who are vaccuocerebral can't actually feel a mental network. Once you've fully understood mechs and the way they work with your brain, then you can decide if you want to develop in a different direction, instead of running away like a coward when you struggle at the beginning.
[ you want to continue, but before you get the chance, lin jingheng's voice patches through the communication system in the room - it startles you enough that you choke on your beer, and it seems like with those words of wisdom, that's the end of that conversation. ]
huang jiangshu | what's defective, and whats correct? part 2
its months later when you've landed on the trash space station full of refugees that you come to call home. though you settle into an uneasy life there, the worst comes to fruition as if lin jingheng practically predicted it - the fleet of prince cayley, the very person who destroyed your home planet, has found the space station and intends to raid it to its core. the ragtag team on this space station has been preparing for this. you, your students, and every pilot of this ramshackle army rushes to arms to create the defensive shield you've poured painstaking hours into creating through a mental network. you have barely enough pilots to make it work - barely enough trained people, let alone pilots, but this place has become your home, and you're as determined to protect it as you have since the first day you landed here.
you are in a flurry as you try and help people into mechs. you and huang jiangshu stay on the ground, and you lock yourself into mission control, fingers flying over the keyboards of your computers as you help direct mechs into their positions, as new pilots lock into the mental network, and it seems like it's going to work. you need bodies; you hand huang jiangshu a little trinket monoeye hawk gave you, once, a noise filter she can connect to keep anyone from digging into her brain too much, from hearing the people around her and she climbs into a mech. you tell her a story, about when you were little. about the misconception of vaccuocerebrals. about your own experience - about how youcouldn't even pilot your body, let alone a mech, and you tell her the symptoms. it's not a disease. it's the way bodies connect with mechs, and you know it. your body is like hers - the crushing feeling of tinnitus, the way it feels like the network punched you in the gut. you had to learn, but with the noise filter, you did. you practiced, and you learned.
she seems okay with you piloting her in the silence, in the moment of trust built between you, and clambers into a mech. it's going to be fine. but - but.
connecting to a neural network is terrifying, and takes a tremendous amount of mental strength. a pilot, young, barely twenty, begins to panic as he locks into the network and it takes over the function of his brain - he completely loses control of the mech right as it starts to take off, and it's going directly towards the thermonuclear power station you created to keep the space station itself on line. you grit your teeth and start moving like a conductor, pulling lines of coding and hacking into the system of the mech as it barrels down the launch area and straight towards the power station - and through your sheer hacking prowess, you're able to abruptly change the direction of the tracks and send the haywire mech with the unconscious pilot up instead of out.
but up isn't enough. it rockets forward, smashes through the atmosphere without any indication of slowing, and you realize in horror that it's going to crash into the carefully positioned mechs that are barely holding onto the soon to be created defense shield. they're all barely synched. one single mistake, one off mech, one crash and it could destroy everything, and you can't get there fast enough to hack into the neural network itself, you're managing things on the ground, and you turn on your personal device, slap down a number, and bark in huang jiangshu's ear. ]
Xiao Huang! I need you!
[ she startles. she's sitting in the cockpit of a mech, just as a body moreso than as a pilot. unable to sync, she was just going to be piloted by someone like monoeye hawk. you know this is risky, but you know, you know - you plead, now, turning your voice to encouraging into her ear, ] You've learned this before. I need you to take over that mech!
[ huang jiangshu makes a noise like a startled animal, and you watch her, terrified for her, heart pounding in your chest, barely breathing, as she starts to reach out. the out of control mech rockets upwards, and you think, come on, you can do this, come on, come on, i believe in you, come on. you watch her flounder as you desperately reach out for her mech, because if she can make it to the out of control mech and make it stop, you can help stabilize them both.
you can feel her. you feel the way she rushes into the mental network like she's swinging a beer bottle, and your heart rushes with pride, and you hear her tiny, stop reverberate across the conjoined network. another pilot hears her, too, and yells - Stop it! in tune. another, another, another, until two hundred voices unite together. over their fear. over their despair. over the impossible situation, the trash space station moves at one.
Stop it!, they scream, at the mech that's gone wrong. in a rush of human voices and human spirit, they grab the weak voice of huang jiangshu and they lift her, up, up, up and you see your opportunity and you latch on.
your network compatability is much higher than huang jiangshu's, and if you overload her, you could kill her, could break this tiny, fragile consciousness as she desperately tries to stop with the entire space station behind her. but these kids, they're your responsibility. they're your entire life, and you will never, ever, ever let anything go wrong, for as long as you can. like threading a needle, you push your compatability to exactly fifty percent, so you take the mental load she's struggling under and offer a helping hand, and you say, as calmly as you can, your heart swelling, stopping yourself from sounding choked up as your voice rings out as gentle and kind as the beams of the sun. ]
Xiao Huang, don't be nervous. Clear out slowly. You're the most talented student I've ever had.
[ she takes a sharp, shaky breath, and you feel her agree. you feel her move. bit, by tiny bit, her mental connection drops away, and you fill the space, picking up each piece of slack she hands you with her trembling hand, and with your expertise and her initial skill, the mech finally slows to a stop.
the whole space ship goes silent, and then - in a burst of cacophony, the crowd of people below and the pilots above burst into cheers and sobs, and you fall back into your chair, smiling so hard your face hurts, as huang jiangshu safely disconnects from the network, wipes the blood from her nose, and beams at you from across a camera's feed. ]
lin jingheng | stars can be reborn, but what about you?
a second later, there's an explosion, as just out of the range of your tiny little mech, a heavy mecha self destructs. the ecopod scatters, and you do everything you can to keep from getting smashed against the asteroids, as frantic as a tiny rodent trying to leap from asteroid to asteroid amidst stardust and aftershocks, and with careful piloting and sheer nerves and terror, you manage to get your net thrown out to gently loop around the ecopod - a piece of debris smacks into your mech and rattles you so hard it hurts your teeth, but you don't care, you don't care - you frantically open a communication line directly to the ecopod, and yell - ] Lin, can you hear me?! Please choose between losing some weight or dropping some speed here, I can’t hold on anymore!”
[ lin jingheng doesn't respond, but zhanlu's smooth robotic voice does, as the net slips free, and you swear. “Good evening Headmaster Lu, it’s a pleasure to see you.”
you shriek, half hysterical. ] The pleasure's not mine! You and your master almost scared me half to death!
[ zhanlu makes a noise. "I agree. Today was absolutely terrible." in striking contrast to his voice, another aftershock explosion slams across the asteroid belt, rattling your mech, and pushing the ecopod further away from you. "This Ecopod is created from my shapeshifting functionalities and cannot continuously provide proper nutrients and medical care like a proper Ecopod.”
zhanlu is of course, reading you the textbook functions, which you don't need. you wave him off at first, fussy and desperate and trying to focus, starting, ] That's fine, I have everything on this mech, here -
[ but zhanlu keeps talking. "And as a mech core without a mech body in a complete vacuum environment, the protection I can provide my master is equivalent to that of a mech’s built-in shield cover. My current battery power only allows me to maintain this function for three minutes, and we are now entering the countdown for the last minute; 59, 58…”
your heart drops into your stomach.
you bellow - ] Zhanlu! [ in horror, in sheer horror, no no no you can't lose him no no no - and you do something stupid, so stupid. you take that tiny little mech and you accelerate it to near suicidal levels of speed, darting past the asteroids - the safety systems start to scream at you, a single crash would explode your mech at this high speed and you inside of it, the alarms are blaring and zhanlu continues counting, and you swear in frustration as another push from the explosion pushes the ecopod, and as you throw every ounce of your mental strength into powering the mech, you start gaining, gaining on the ecopod, 500 feet 400 300 200 --
there's no time to take the net back out and cast it. it floats with you at top speed.
you pass the ecopod, then you slam your hand into a throttle lever on the dash and hit the button that reverses the internal gravity control in your mech. every object in the mech, pilot included, is thrown to the opposite side of it. your back crunches hard into the metal side of the ship, but the gravity pressing outwards has its desired effect, and it brings the ecopod in like a vacuum, directly into the net. zhanlu counts. 25... 24...
there's no time to hurt. you scramble up to your feet and rush back to the control panels, slapping a button to open the receiving bay of your mech, but of course, of course the gravity dragged in a piece of debris, a massive cargo door along with the ecopod. it shrieks and groans, as it tangles up with the net and leaves the ecopod floating, and you have to fire a particle cannon at it to try and get it to release - the door releases, but the ecopod dips free of your clutches, too, out of the net, and the panic and adrenaline turn to horror -
15...14...
you're sweating buckets, ice cold down your back as your consider a life without lin jingheng, but there's no time, no time to do anything but react - you grab the gravity switch and throw it back again, reverseing gravity for a second time and slamming yourself into the opposite side of the cockpit, but this time, it nullifies and you're able to cast out the last capture net you have. it catches the ecopod, and you choke with relief as the net makes contact -
10... 9...
- you hit your emergency brake, and open the receiving bay, and the ecopod slides safely into the welcoming cargo hold of your neck, the door shutting out the vacuum of space, which takes exactly ten seconds to safely pressurize - and, in the nick of time, the doors close and the ecopod's protection system shatters. you don't evne have time to check, but you use those ten seconds to rocket free of the final wave of aftershocks.
and then you sprint downstairs.
you stumble all over yourself, crashing into ten things down the hallway, your mind focused on one and one thing alone, one thought alone - lin's been out of contact for a full day, out of tracking range, just because he's in here he wasn't conscious what if he's dead what if i was too slow what if what if --
the door slides open, and laying in the cargo hold, ecopod now transformed back into its dormant arm form on his chest, is lin jingheng.
you sob. you can't help yourself, just one hiccuped noise as clumsily make your way to him. something is - something is wrong. he's so tiny, he's - drained, almost, drained and impossibly weak and down to nothing, his cheekbones hollowed, his skin dry and sallow, and he's bloodstained all over the place. he looks like he's lost thirty kilos overnight, he's so, so pale and you feel your blood starting to rush in your ears as you scrabble to check his pulse. ]
Please respond. [ you beg. your voice sounds foreign to your ears, like it's coming through water, as lin's head lolls lightly against your wrist and you think no, no, no, i can't, no, no, no don't you leave me i can't not without you no no no no ] Lin, please, please respond -
[ ten seconds pass.
and then you hear it. a single, small thump of a heartbeat.
you sob out a relieved sigh, and you start to gather lin into your arms. he's so thin it's terrifying. so light, it's too easy. you know, you know he's alive, but you can feel that the back of his shirt is wet and you know it's blood and his skin is unbearably hot to the touch. you shove him into a medical capsule, and you watch as the diagnoses pop up on the screen.
Rainbow virus.
That sends your heart to your feet.
Severe dehydration. Neurological processing overload.
Gunshot wound.
but he's still alive. lin's still alive. you push him into the medical bay of your mech, even if it's tiny, and you press your face to the glass window, and you close your eyes, and your brain is flooded with thoughts, of lin asphyxiating in space, of his blood vessels bursting and the explosion that would evaporate the water from his body. what would he have done, if you weren't there? he would have died. and one thought stands out above the others, as he stares down at the placid, bloodstained face in the medical capsule.
Stars can be reborn. What about you?
your despair and relief are replaced, quietly, by anger, and you curl your fists against the glass.
(because he did this on his own. because he didn't ask for help. because now, lin jingheng has to recover from the virus that nearly wiped out their civilization. because it looks like it must have nearly killed him. he did it on his own. it makes you so angry that you quietly plot how you're going to yell at him for an hour, because it's the only thing you can do to keep from breaking down in tears.)
the trash space station | the riot
the place is a mess. there's hardly any electricity, and the people who live on it are refugees or ragtag smugglers who worked for the old fart. they're rough and tumble and peak eighth galaxy, and when you get off of your mech and start to get to know them, you realize you can solve some of their problems, with a little time. in the background, you and lin discover the entire space station is powered by an old, old mach 3 mech - and the mysteries on mysteries continue. you start to fall in love with the people here the way you fall in love with the eighth all the time, and they start to love you, as you fix their video screens and you work day and night to build a thermonuclear power station with your students at your side. two weeks pass by smoothly.
but then, the rumblings of something strange start to happen. more specifically, the sixty mech 'self defense force' starts to get angry and rebellious - not at lin and you, but instead at their old leader, who is currently hidden deep in the depths of an underground prison for lin and your dad to question, because he took so long to surrender that people got hurt. (because, truthfully, operating a mech when you aren't trained to is terrifying. it's against human nature, to be knocked around in the vacuum of space.)
you find out about it from saturday, the young leader of the self defense squad, who has absolutely nothing to do with the loud protest itself. he comes to talk to you instead - the so called 'revolt' is just a protest, at the moment - but as you're talking to saturday, things start to get dicey. the men and women and refugees are getting angrier and louder and angrier, and they start to call for violence. they turn from where they're in the tiny city square towards the administration building where lin, your father, your students, the mech core and the prisoner himself all are.
shoot.
truthfully, you're less worried about the damage an angry mob can do, and more worried about lin. you already had to beg him to give you some time to keep this station from becoming bait for the warring prince cayley in order to save the people who live on it, and he will not be happy if a bunch of hooligans start banging down his door and calling him insults. you gather up your personal device and start to hack into the base itself, pulling up cameras of the networks of the base's road, finding a roadblock mechanic and throwing up a iron fence roadblock in the path of the now growing, angry mob. saturday cheers beside you, and you're pleased, but you don't even get enough time to smile.
the mob, which couldn't fight together to save its life barely a week ago, coordinates into one giant force like a battering ram. it'd be impressive if it wasn't horrible - they start ramming into the iron fence, which is rusty and old like everything else on this base. screaming, shouting for blood, for their old leader to come out, why did he abandon them, why would he treat them like this, why, why, why --
you make it on the scene just in time for your device, hacked into the network, to pop up a warning. Warning. High Energy Particle Concentration. Warning.
your eyes widen; your breath catches, as you realize in horror that lin's summoned the particle cannons on the side of the building, and he's going to fire.
the fence comes down. the mob screams in delight.
the blossom of heat starts from the particle cannon and you slam your fingers into your device and start to type, furiously - in the spare seconds before an entire group of people is turned to ashes you grab onto the base's tiny self defense shield and you throw a programming command and the entire shield concentrates in one spot like a wall in front of the shrieking, angry mob, and lin's fired particle cannons slam into it with the force of the IUS's best technology. the defense net shatters into pieces, and the entire base shakes like an earthquake, as the shrieks of rage turn to confusion and horror.
you exhale.
when the smoke clears, the defense net is gone, but the mob remains. and you know lin could fire again, if he wanted to, but you have no way of stopping it, a second time. your head whips up to the administration building like you could see him, like you could beg him not to, but you're too far away and that won't work. you have a golden chance in this moment of confusion, and you seize it.
you summon two medical robots. saturday makes a confused noise but you ignore him, as one finds your arm, places an antiseptic, creates a sanitized safe zone and then injects something into your arm. there's no time for anesthesia, and the pain is violent enough to drop you to your knees, but you feel the familiarity of power go down your spine like lightning, and that's all you need.
opium biochip activated.
you turn up the features as it changes your mental capacities. camoflauge. invisibility. and you push them outwards, out to your surroundings and the network you've created. you create the illusion - the slight, soft hum sound that echoes through the brain of every person in the mob. the camoflauge sweeps over a row of houses, so they suddenly vanish in a sweep of bright light white, and the logo of the cayley pirates appears in their place, and the tiny, useless mechs in the mech bay change too, into the illusion of massive, terrifying cayley mechs with all of their guns pointed directly at the planet.
you switch your attention - blood drips out of your nose - to the massive multimedia screens in the center of the space station that you fixed a few days ago, and you reach into your own files, and the people of the trash space station see it.
they see the sky filling with mechs and then, missiles. hundreds and hundreds of every side, unflinchingly, dropping down, down, down - the anger turns to shrieks of fright and terror, people trying to scramble away from doom and despair and misery and -
the video turns off, and you straighten.
the crowd is silent, dead silent. several of the members of the self defense force have fallen to the ground. others are crying. horrified, shocked by the fact that what they saw wasn't real, relieved, and - stopped.
you clear your throat. ]
I'm sorry for what you saw just now. I was debugging the terminal and unintentionally turned on the footage from the news of the bombing of Beijing Beta. [ silence. the crowd looks to you for answers, shocked and stunned.
in the middle of the crowd, a young man starts to sob. it takes your attention - you realize that he's next to a wall, and he's having a hysteria reaction, that he's balled his fists up and is punching the concrete, enough that the startled mob members turn to look at him. you rush over to the man, unable to bear watching, and use the super strength afforded to you by the biochip to take his hands. ]
Listen to me. [ you coax, to the screaming, crying man - ] Listen. To. Me.
[ and, slowly, he does. he takes a deep, hiccuping breath, snot trailing down his face, and you exhale too, some of the tension in your shoulders finally starting to break. you're talking not just to him, but to the entire crowd, turning your voice from gentle and soothing to delivering facts. ]
You guys have mechs. That makes you militant in the eyes of those people. [ of the ones on the video - the very same people who destroyed your home. why would you have that footage? because beijing beta is where you lived. it's where your school was. your friends lived. it's a place that you called home, and in the blink of an eye, ares von and the cayley pirates destroyed it.
you won't have that again. ] If you all try and destroy the mechs in the storeroom like you're thinking right now, you'll blow up your entire planet, and the energy of the explosion will draw the Cayley pirates here like you're throwing them a dinner party. Right now, we're safe, but the first time Prince Cayley was kicked out of the Eighth Galaxy, it was because he ignored these underground channels. He's not going to make that mistake again, and when he comes here, it will be a matter of time before he kills us all.
[ silence ripples across this crowd of haggard faces - some old, some young, crying, scared, silent. your heart aches for them, but you have to be firm in the words you deliver for this exact reason. you look across the crowd as you stand, finally releasing the hands of the man who was beating himself up on the wall, who wipes his face and makes a squeaky sob noise like a conch.
you take a deep breath. ] If you don't want to die like that, then put your Self Defense Squadron uniform on tomorrow, and report to the mech bay, and come see me tomorrow. Roger that.
[ the silence passes, again, slowly. you rub the man beside you's back, and watch, as one by one, the angry, furious mob starts to disperse, silent, heavy with the weight of what their future can hold. you saved them from lin's irritation.
now, you can only hope they can save themselves. ]