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I was walking back to the medical bay with my new tablet. The meeting with Himeko had been incredibly short, she'd seemed completely distracted after I mentioned that Mei was the Herrscher, which, to be fair, was understandable. She hadn't even mentioned St. Freya Academy.
Himeko had stuck up for Mei in the original timeline, where Mei had tried to murder everyone and almost blown up the Hyperion. Hopefully, since Mei was currently remarkably un-Herrscherized and hadn't tried to destroy the ship or kill Himeko, she wouldn't suddenly change her mind.
When I arrived back at the medbay, Kiana, sitting on an examination table, waved.
"Hey! How'd it go? You know more about what's going on?"
Man, I really wondered what Siegfried had been doing all this time. He'd somehow managed to teach Kiana flirting techniques, exclusively for women by the way, but hadn't told her the important stuff, like about Schicksal, or the fact that he was one of its most wanted fugitives.
Theresa wasn't here, and I didn't want to explain anything to Kiana, it'd contradict what I'd said about not knowing anything about the Honkai. So, I decided to play mute. Honestly, it would've been better if Kiana had been knocked out like in the original story so I didn't have to deal with her.
"You are Miss Raiden Mei, correct? Can you please come with me?" The person-whos-name-I-still-didn't-know spoke.
Mei silently sat up, and followed them out of the examination room, I quickly sat down in the seat that Mei had vacated.
"Hey! Aren't you gonna say something?" Kiana complained.
"Say what?" I asked.
"Answer my question!"
"It was okay."
"That's not what I asked! I asked if you knew what's going on with this airship! It's super cool!" Kiana said, grinning.
"It's a Schicksal airship, the Captain is called Himeko, I am going to do some reading now." I said, ignoring Kiana who had started to complain before being interrupted by the doctor who was attempting to examine her.
"Hey, is there a quiet place I can read?" I asked the doctor, who gestured toward the open door leading into the lobby. Grabbing Bronya's arm, I pulled her with me into the medical bay's waiting area.
The lobby was mostly filled with stretchers and futuristic looking first-response gear, it was a combat vessel after all, not a doctors office. Still, there was a small corner with a few chairs, likely for those with minor injuries.
I had explored the tablet a little bit while I had been walking back, ignoring the books tagged in the library temporarily. The tablet was logged into Himeko's account, I could tell because the icon in the top right corner had an image of Himeko in her military uniform, staring straight at the camera.
"This tablet's logged into the captain's account," I told Bronya. "Can you extract information from it without being noticed?"
"The Bronya is unable to deploy Project Bunny for hacking in this area," she said. "What kind of information do you require?"
I thought for a moment before saying, "A transcript of students who attend St. Freya, also Schicksal's file on me… us."
Bronya took the tablet and opened my file first. It was almost completely empty.
__________________________
Name: Lee Edelhart
Gender: F
Height: 163cm (5 ft 4 in)
Weight: 52 kg (115 lbs)
Date of birth: July 7th, 1997 (16 years and 7 months old)
Place of birth: Earth
Mother: Unknown (Deceased)
Father: Unknown (Deceased)
Current Guardian: Unknown
__________________________
My file noted that I had recently transferred to Chiba academy, along with a copy of a transfer school transfer document, my prior schooling was listed as 'Homeschooled'.
Suspiciously vague, and also what was with 'Earth'! That was extremely conspicuous! Still, my inheritance records had proper legal documents attached, and there were fabricated vaccination records, enough to establish a paper trail. At least there wasn't a big red tag saying "Potential Anti-Entropy Spy."
I don't know how they could have records of legal documents for inheritance that somehow managed to not mention a name other than myself a single time, but I guess it was somehow perfectly legal?
[System: I have done this before you know! (╥﹏╥)]
Shut up, I still don't want to talk with you after you identified Himeko as a romance target, that's Mama Himeko!
The most important thing was that my file looked clean.
Next was Bronya's.
__________________________
Name: Bronya Zaychik
Gender: F
Height: 142 cm (4 ft 8 in)
Weight: 40 kg (88 lbs)
Date of birth: August 8th, 2000 (13 years, 6 months old)
Place of birth: Siberia
Mother: Alexandra Pavlovna Zaychik (Deceased)
Father: Alexei Sydavich Zaitsev (Deceased)
Current Guardian: Cocolia Rand
__________________________
She had enrolled in Chiba Academy's High School division somehow despite only being 13 years old, her scores on the Chiba Academy Entrance exam was listed as 99.5th percentile, which I guess explains how they accepted her. The records stated that she was homeschooled before enrolling a few weeks ago into Chiba Academy, before even the takeover of ME Corp.
Kiana's file was next.
__________________________
Name: Kiana Kaslana
Gender: F
Height: 163 cm (5 ft 4 in)
Weight: 49kg (108 lbs)
Date of birth: December 7th, 1998 (15 years and 2 months old)
Place of birth: Unknown
Mother: Unknown
Father: Unknown
__________________________
It showed that Kiana had attended several schools all in different countries, including L'Aquiletta Elementry School in Italy in 2008, Port-au-Prince Middle School in Haiti in 2009, and Cagayan Middle school in the Philippines in 2011, before finally listing her transfer to Chiba Academy's High School Division in 2013.
Her file also indicated that she was arrested by police several months ago in conjunction with a case regarding missing Chiba Academy students that were later found deceased. It noted that the victims were noted as having displayed mental disorders prior to death, and that the police report had found that Kiana had been acting in self defence.
Finally, Mei.
__________________________
Name: Raiden Mei
Gender: F
Height: 172 cm (5 ft 8 in)
Weight: 55kg (121 lbs)
Date of birth: April 13th, 1997 (16 years and 10 months old)
Place of birth: Nagazora City.
Father: Raiden Ryoma.
Mother: Unknown (Deceased)
__________________________
Her file listed that she attended Chiba Academy from the elementary division all the way to the High School division.
Her mother's death by cancer in 1999 was noted, oddly, despite her being marked as "Unknown." It also mentioned that in 2004, Mei had been abducted by a terrorist group and treated for three years at a ME-Corp institution. The final entry, dated six days ago, linked to a news report about Raiden Ryoma's arrest.
System, these guys are like 15-16, I feel like you shouldn't be shipping me with them.
[System: You are legally and biologically 16 years old, so it's fine. ദ്ദി(˵ •̀ ᴗ - ˵ ) ✧]
But what about mentally! I am a college student! Even if it's just a first year.
[System: Again, that's only a difference of 2 years, Kiana and Mei have a similar gap. Even mentally you are quite childish still. (˶˃ ᵕ ˂˶)]
I am not childish! Also, how exactly are Kiana and Mei even in the same class with a 1 year 6 month age gap!
Looking back at the tablet, I asked Bronya "Can you pull up the student files at St. Freya? Himeko is a teacher there so it shouldn't be flagged since this is her account."
Bronya pulled up the list, before giving the tablet back to me. I started to type out Fu Hua in the search field, before realising that it would probably be logged. Searching for our information was fine, since Himeko was probably already doing the exact same thing, but searching for someone else specific was probably suspicious.
I just scrolled down the list which was thankfully in Alphabetical order. Scrolling down to "F" there were only a few students, Fu Hua was not listed among them.
Made sense, she only came to St. Freya in the original story to monitor Kiana and Mei, since they hadn't even joined St. Freya yet, it was unlikely that she would be there.
I closed the student list and reopened the digital library. The collection was fascinating, textbooks on Honkai theory, Schicksal documents, Valkyrie tactics. I might have known more about the high level aspects of the Honkai than anyone during this time period, but I lacked the low level understanding, how it worked at the level of energy fields and biological corruption, the medical effects of something like Honkai corruption, and details on various types of Honkai beasts.
Looking at the favorited for the 2 textbooks that Himeko had flagged, Basics of Honkai and Schicksal, a Brief History.
Of the 2 textbooks, Basics of Honkai appealed more to me, so I started reading.
About half way through the first chapter, which was basically baby level. I raised my head as I heard approaching footsteps, I saw Mei returning escorted by 2 Valkyries, she waved at me and I did a little wave back, the Valkyries brought her to the same examination room as before, before one of them stopped and stood by the door while the other follow Mei inside.
I got up to approach the examination room, before the Valkyrie stopped me with a raised hand. After a few more seconds, Kiana was kicked out as well.
"Hey I know my examination is done but why can't I stay with Mei!" Kiana said to the Valkyrie outside the door.
She just shrugged in response.
I grabbed Kiana and dragged her back to where Bronya was sitting.
"Why are you so quiet—and forceful—all of a sudden?" Kiana complained.
"I'm quiet," I said, "because I don't want to say anything."
Pushing Kiana into the chair next to Bronya, before sitting down on the other side, with Kiana in the middle.
"Okay, the Hyperion is probably going to depart soon, since they have found the Herrscher."
"How did they do that? How could they find out about Mei?" Kiana blurted out.
Bronya shuffled a bit in her seat, and I responded with "Because I told them that she was the Herrscher."
"Why did you do that?" Kiana looked confused.
"Himeko is a good person, she will stick up for Mei, and if I didn't, we would be stuck here until they exhausted all possible leads. In addition, if they found out we knew Mei was the Herrscher and were hiding it, the consequences would be super bad, okay?" I told Kiana.
"How do you know Himeko is a good person? You were only gone for that interview for about 4 minutes."
"I already knew who Himeko was. They are a teacher at St. Freya academy, don't tell anyone I told you that."
This caused Bronya to shuffle around in her seat yet again, no doubt wondering how I knew so much about St. Freya.
She was probably still deciding whether or not I was a Schicksal agent. I had denied it on the shuttle, however I might have just waited to report to Himeko, which is why the interview was so short and why I had immediately reported the Herrscher. However my behavior in stealthy searching through Schicksal records was probably throwing her off even more, who knows what she thought now.
"Whats St. Freya?" Kiana asked.
"I am not going to explain it, too annoying." I said.
After a moment I said "Himeko is probably going to interview you, you can ask questions then. By the way, if you mention St. Freya, tell them that Siegfried told you about it."
"Siegfried? What's he got to do with any of this?" Kiana said, before gesturing around the medical bay lobby of the airship.
"Because Siegfried used to be one of Schicksal's strongest knights, but he defected to Anti Entropy. He is now Schicksal's most wanted."