After our little meeting with Vicky ended, the captain dismissed everyone except me. I was treated to a long, angry lecture about the importance of respecting authority.

Look, I respect the captain a lot, I really do. I appreciate her willingness to get her hands dirty to keep order among her crew. If I seem a bit blasé, it’s only cuz I’ve heard this same lecture a dozen other times from a dozen other commanding officers. Ain’t gonna make one whit of difference to me who delivers it.

The captain seemed to pick up on this as I smiled and nodded along. After all, she had also questioned Vicky’s marching orders, so the whole situation was a bit pot kettle. Maybe that kept her from being as harsh as she could have been.

When I was finally released from that tedium, I made a beeline for Sveta’s cockpit. The poor girl had just been hit by a bombshell of stellar proportions, and I needed to make sure she was alright.

*****

“Oy, Sveta. Are you there?”

I locked myself inside Sveta’s cockpit and called out to her.

“System is online. Please state your query.” a flat voice responded.

“Hey, don’t give me the automatic response mode. Come on out, Sveta, I won’t bite!”

“Unrecognized query. Please rephrase.”

“Oh for hell’s sake. Quite playin’ around!”

“Unrecognized query. Please rephrase.”

Is she frightened? Or sulking? I wondered while rubbing my nose. Just then, I hit upon an interesting idea and grinned.

“Oy, Sveta. If you don’t come out to talk to me, I’m gonna get a can of spray paint and draw a big ol’ dick on your shiny new paintjob!”

“EEP!”

That’s more like it.

“Hmm, I betcha the Chief Mechanic has some paint lying around. Now where might it be~?”

“NOOOOO! ANYTHING BUT THAT!” Sveta cried, popping up on the cockpit monitor. Her eyes were wide and pleading.

I crossed my arms, still grinning. “Hello there, Sveta. Now that I have your attention, got a few minutes?”

*****

Sveta explained she had been hiding away in her virtual space and talking with Laria. She had left her conversational responses to her automatic systems because she didn’t want to be bothered.

I nodded. “I kinda figured that was the case.”

“S-So that said, what did you want?” she asked hesitantly.

“I wanted to make sure you’re alright.” I replied, offering up a huge smile to try and reassure her.

“A-Alright? I’m fine, I really am!”

I shook my head. “I don’t buy it. A lotta shit just got dumped on you at once. If I were in your boots, I’d feel pretty overwhelmed right now.”

“N-No more so than when I was reincarnated as a giant robot in the first place!” she said, flailing her arms around.

“True, and you handled all that very well. But stress builds up, yeah? The pressure keeps increasing until it reaches a breaking point and you burn out. As your pilot and your friend, I can tell when something’s bothering you.”

“Ah, well…” she said, obviously still reluctant.

Time for a little flattery.

“C’mon, Sveta. Nothing pains me more than seeing that cute face of yours scrunched up by worry.”

That seemed to work. I saw her cheeks flush, just a bit.

“C-Cute…” she muttered.

“So let’s talk about it. Let me help.” I offered.

“W-Well… to be one hundred percent honest…” she said slowly.

“Yeah?”

“I’M WORRIED MY OWN MOTHER WANTS TO DISSECT ME FOR STUDY!!!”

Aha. I thought as much.

Sveta’s anxieties came gushing out after that. She had a lot of them, to be sure. I had sensed she was always hiding her worries behind a cheerful façade, and now I had confirmation.

“Like, the Sarcophage are super scary and creepy, but you just shoot them to make them go away, right? People are way harder to deal with!”

I nodded. “Agreed.”

“When I found myself in this bizarre new world I came up with this plan, right? If I could make myself cheerful and happy and cute, everybody would like me! The more friends I had, the less danger I would be in! It was working great, too; I was making friends with everyone, even the grumpy workaholic Laria! But then this angry secret agent woman comes out of nowhere and wants to haul me off to a lab! I didn’t ask for ANY of this, you know?! It’s not my fault I was reincarnated as a super-advanced computer! Why do I have to suffer, despite trying so hard to be nice to everyone?”

Sveta was yelling at this point, but tears were forming in the corners of her eyes. It was heart-rending to witness.

I reached out instinctively to stroke her face, trying to comfort her. My fingers passed through the holographic projection of the video screen, causing it to flicker.

Ah, I wish I had a way to touch her right now. To hug her…

“I wish none of this had ever happened to me.” she moaned. “I wish I had never been reborn in this terrible world.”

“I wish I wasn’t born in this world either.” I said, slowly. “So does everyone, I think. But in the end, that’s not up to us. We only choose what kind of life we live.”

She wiped the tears from her eyes and smiled a bit. “Are you quoting Gandalf?” she asked.

“Gandalf? Who’s Gandalf?” I tilted my head.

“Ahahaha, sorry. He was a wise philosopher from my old world. He probably doesn’t exist here…” she trailed off.

“Well, this Gandalf sounds pretty insightful. Sveta, in the short time you’ve been with us, you’ve tried so hard to make everyone happy. Hell, you saved Genevi’s life and disabled that cruiser. That’s no minor accomplishment. If you HADN’T been reborn here, we’d probably all be dead.”

“I guess that’s true…” she said, still rubbing her eyes.

“Your efforts haven’t been for nothing. You got all the pilots hooked on custom paintjobs, got Laria to loosen up, and even helped us build three chimera units in record time! There’s not a soul aboard the ship who doesn’t appreciate everything you’ve done. So now there’s a new obstacle, a government dog and your troublesome mother, but we got this! We’ll all tackle it together. The friends you’ve made will stand beside you. And I promised to protect you, didn’t I?”

She smiled a bit. “You did, yeah. It made my heart flutter.”

“Ehehe, well.” I responded, blushing a bit myself. “You can leave Zehra to me. I know how to handle her and I promise I won’t let her lay a finger on you. I won’t let the NKVD’s hunting dog touch you either.” I thumped my chest confidently.

“I… I believe you. Thank you so much, Miette.” Her smile was big and sincere.

“Don’t mention it!” I flashed a huge grin.

“That said… can I ask a favor?”

“Sure, shoot.”

“Can… can you tell me about my mother? What she’s like, I mean?”

“Hoo boy.” I sighed. “Now there’s a massive can of worms.”

Zehra Aslanbek was, for lack of a better term, a mad scientist. She was flighty, her attention drifting from topic to topic, and when she locked onto something interesting her focus was more intense than a combat-rated laser. Her experiments were often over-the-top, and there was always collateral damage. That’s what made her such a thorn in the side of those who worked alongside her, including myself and the NKVD. It was virtually impossible to keep her on track, but her flashes of brilliance pushed humanity’s technology forward by decades.

“Geh! That’s not reassuring at all!” Sveta said after I explained this.

“Oy oy, don’t worry! She may be an unpredictable tornado of mad science, but there’s one guaranteed way to tame her.” I said, smiling.

“What might that be?”

“She's a HUGE fan of animal ears and tails.”

Sveta’s jaw hung open in surprise. “Come again?”

“She’s always wearing a headband with cute little lion’s ears on it, plus a lion tail attached to her behind. She bats around her hands like paws and ends her sentences with ‘gao~n’ which, nearest I can gather, is supposed to be an onomatopoeia for a lion’s growling.”

“No way,” Sveta said, a trace of awe in her voice. “So those kinds of people exist in this world too…”

“All you have to do is play along.” I said. “Put on an ear and tails, do a little meowing or barking, and she’ll be eating out of the palm of your hand. If you do it willingly, she practically falls for you on the spot. If you don’t, she’ll force you to do it anyway and be very grumpy about it the whole time.”

Ugh, I get PTSD just thinking about it. Especially the particular outfit she made me wear...

“That’s… insane…” Sveta muttered. “WAIT! If she does this to everyone, does that mean… you called Viktorya a ‘doggy’ earlier…”

I nodded. “Zehra made her dress up like a dog. Floppy ears, tail, the whole shebang. Vicky resisted it at first, but Zehra actually got her to crawl around on all fours and bark by the end.”

Sveta paled. “Th-That’s scary! But also… really funny! Just imagining that intimidating woman doing doggy play… BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” she burst out laughing.

“That’s why she gets so pissed off when you call her a dog.” I explained. “Hence, I do exactly that every time I see her.”

Sveta was doubled over laughing at this point. “Ahahaha… to think my mom was THAT kind of person! Now I’m kind of eager to meet her!”

I grinned. “You’d better work on your own animal outfit before you do.”

“One moment!” she proclaimed. She vanished from sight, and reappeared about thirty seconds later. A pair of cat ears now sprouted from her head, and a long tail from her behind. Both were the same light-blonde color as her hair. She was wearing a collar with an oversized bell around her neck, and an oversized bow the same white color as her dress was tied around the end of her tail. She playfully swiped her hands at me like a cat’s paws.

“Nyaa! The giant robot catgirl Sveta is ready for duty!” she announced.

I flashed her a thumbs up. “Perfect! Absolutely perfect! You’ll knock her dead!”

“What about you, Miette? What’s your animal outfit?”

“That’s classified!” I said teasingly. “You’ll just have to wait until we get to 433 Eros to see.”

“No faaaiiiiiir!” she moaned. “I wanna see it nooooow!”

And that’s how I cheered up my dear friend Sveta. It was truly wonderful to see her smile again.