Chương 43: 027 – Interlude: Rain Super S

"All right, it's confirmed," Rain reported.

"The suits that they'll be using are all self-contained and won't vent anything into the station's atmosphere, all the visitors have been chosen, all the special benches have been fabricated and distributed along the tour path, and I have grunts ready to move around benches and put them near anyone who might be tired. Policy announcements have been updated and distributed, we have the list of people who will be arriving—with pictures—and we have the tour planned. Did we miss anything?

"You're dripping oil onto the table," Namine pointed out before taking a bit of her pizza.

"Oh, poot!" Rain grabbed a kitchen rag and wiped up the drip. Her pizza had been sticking out over her plate and the tip had been drooping down.

"All right, other than that, did we miss anything?"

"We didn't miss that drip, you did," Cloud said with cheerful pedantry. Rain blinked, looking concerned.

"Did I stop being part of 'we' and no one told me?"

"Ah. No, you didn't," Cloud allowed.

"I think we got everything?" She looked down at her notebook, because it was considered rude to fill your buddy with random notes they would be too polite to delete, and because notebooks could be very cute.

"Yup, we've got everything. Admittedly, this is a lot less than the original first visit plan, but since they'll be in suits we can't have a full course fiesta." Full course fiestas were a big deal. The most time-intensive involved cloning at last one full pig instead of just pig protein cultures, because a proper lechon liempo needed the bones and skin too.

They needed time to grow outside the vat, both to get a proper layer of fat and because growing anything in the vats got very complicated once growth hormones started to get into it. They hadn't cloned any pigs, because first contacts were unlikely to be predictable a year in advance—not impossible, but unlikely—but they'd debated whether they should try to get any anyway. Everyone else checked their notebooks, just to be sure. Rain didn't, but she'd always been good at remembering things like this…

until she didn't, any someone else with a notebook corrected her. However, no one did, and none of the buddies spoke up either. So yeah, they hadn't missed anything. Ooh, Margaret had put toasted notrice into the stuffed crust! It gave the thing a nice crunch on top of the gooey and garlicky cheesiness.

"All right!" Margaret said.

"So, there's no reason to change the schedule. I'll send out the announcement so all the other teams can adjust if they want to. Rain, I want you to start rehearse giving our guests the planned tour. Work out possible questions and anything else you might need. Day before the visit we do one last check, then it's a half-day off so we're not panicked and exhausted when our guests arrive in four days."

Well, that was certainly the intention, and while everyone appreciated their red's thoughtfulness, they were also fairly sure it wouldn't turn out like that. There would be last minute things to do which would somehow take up ten hours instead of just a minute, and sometimes Princess would tell her to stop and sometimes she wouldn't, depending on whether the buddy agreed with her about how important it was. Or not important, that happened too.

"Thanks, big sis," Rain said, because she appreciated the sentiment even if she was self-aware enough to realize that she might end up ruining it anyway. The lunch meeting moved on past Rain, meaning she was able to get another slice of pizza as Margaret asked Namine about the progress on the vaccines from the bacterial and viral cultures. The Pink didn't do the testing herself, she just kept in contact with the sisters and buddies who did. It was… slow going. It had to be.

These were essentially organic nanobots, and so were extremely dangerous. Disease was basically their way of breaking bodies down to make more of themselves, after all. Still, it seemed that they were able to rule out any of the sample being mutagenic, teratogenic, necromantic, evolutionary, sentient, a hive-mind, a hive-mind connection, a sentient hive-mind connection, possessed, haunted, symbiotic, parasitic, would combine with other samples in become DaiVirusOh, or were actually secretly nanobots.

Stupid nanobots. With that stage finished… well, even as developed as their disease control infrastructure was—disease mutation wasn't unknown, especially in the vicinity of the Void breaches—developing vaccines, testing them, and getting to them to every sister would take weeks. Still, it was a familiar problem and the steps had been refined over the centuries, so a full array of vaccines would probably be ready within a few months. After the delicious pizza lunch, everyone went back to work.

Rain headed for the launch bay that the Confederate transport will be landing, checking the how it was coming along. It was one of their open bays, primarily used for non-Ranger traffic: ships bringing up little sisters on field trips, transports going to and from Nightmare with cargo and Kaedekin, and sisters testing out spaceships, fighters and mecha they'd built in their garage.

There was a terraced balcony along one wall where café tables had been set up, a popular place to eat and hang out for the kind of Kaedekin who liked seeing spaceships. They'd picked this landing bay specifically so sisters would have someplace to watch the aliens arriving without being in the way or crowding their visitors… while allowing a good firing position in case this was some kind of ruse to get a special delta operations taskforce squad beret into the station to do shady military things.

It was an unfortunate fact that while the military is probably full of good people, their leaders tended to do stupid stuff. This was why the Rangers weren't a military! In the military, no one calls you out on your stupid idea, they just go along with them, and before you know it someone is making sanctioned supervillain teams using alien weapons that shoot out nanobots. The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Stupid nanobots.

Preparations were well underway. Welcome banners in different languages were being hung up on the dining terrace—the one written in Pagabat was carved into wood so that the hunters would be able to read it—the pink paint on the walls was being touched up, the deck was being scrubbed in preparation for its own repainting, and the force field emitters were being checked by blue-armbanded engineering squads to make sure they could handle either a sudden decompression emergency or a sudden firefight.

Another squad was checking the vents that provided air to the landing bay, probably sure that the anti-nanobot screens and anti-intruder grid were up. The landing point for the confederacy transport—or ships, in case they change their mind—had already been decided, and Rain wrapped herself in vennfluid to lift herself against the pull of the artificial gravity so she could go over the cleaning drone scrubbing the floor.

The sisters at work glanced up at her, and she gave them a wave before she positioned herself above the middle of the designated landing area. Hovering in the air halfway between the floor and the ceiling, Rain was out of anyone's way.

"All right Princess," Rain said, "Can you start timing me? I need to figure out how long I take the first time to see if I need to shorten it." Understood. Preparing countdown. She took a deep breath, loosening her shoulders and imagined she was facing aliens.

"Bawipu guranah weepuh ninibong!" she said.

"Welcome to Stargazer Fortress…!" Rain hummed as she walked back to her room while Princess pinged Domain and the rest of their crèche-sisters to see if they were free to talk. She was calling a bit later than usual, but her bestie had asked for it, saying that she had some teacher evil things to do and would be going home a bit later. Response received, Princess said. Call rerouting to house phone. Establish connection? Oh! That means everyone was home!

"Establish, please," Rain said cheerfully, and a sphere of vennplasma came into being next to her head, an inch from her ear. The plasma earpiece rang for a bit before someone picked up on the other end." Hey Rain, Princess," Tomoko's familiar voice said." How's space?"

"Space is fine," Rain said quietly, knowing Princess would boost her voice in the transmission.

"Hey everyone!

""""" Hey, Rain!"""" Four voices. Two people weren't home yet.

"So, who's there? Is Lorelei home yet?"" Not yet,"Chloe said, that distinct Chloe-ness as thick as ever." Meiya and Buan are up in space. They're testing some of the variant venngrams with the emitters for the ship, and she wanted to be there for it to get new data." Ah. As far as Rain new, no one had risked using variant venngrams with large-scale emitters yet, exactly because of this lack of data.

"Good luck to them, then," she said.

"How are you guys doing? What's for dinner?" It gladdened her heart to be talking to her crèche-sisters again. Rain and Princess hadn't had time for any real time-off since the aliens had arrived, needing to stay on Stargazer in case they were needed. After all, as First Contact Champion, she was the one who was supposed to talk to them and figure out for sure this wasn't an invasion. And so far, the best answer she could give was 'most probably maybe not… I think'.

So she had to stay on duty and keep an eye in case that answer had to change. It was unfortunate, but a Magical Girl needed to be willing to stand and keep their family safe. If that meant not being able to go home… well, it was a small price to pay. After all, if they weren't going to invade, then the aliens had to leave eventually!" So, how are the aliens?

"Reiko asked as Rain heard the sounds of cutlery being prepared." How long before we can meet them?"" In a capacity that hopefully doesn't involve having to fight them," Mitsuki's voice added.

"No fighting, no fighting," Rain laughed.

"And as to meeting them… when are you free?" There was a pause." Are you serious?" Mitsuki said eagerly.

"No, I'm Rain. Sirius lives in a farm outside of town, remember?"" …I'm pretty sure she did that to never have to hear any version of that joke again,"Chloe said." Rain, why are you asking when we'll be free?"

"I miss you all and was wondering if you could come up to visit!"" Then why did you ask in the middle of us talking about how long before we can meet aliens?" Tomoko said.

"No particular reason," Rain said cheerfully."""" There's totally a particular reason!"""""There's a particular reason."

"Absolutely."

"Lying is bad!"

"Does it have anything to do with the increase of activity on Stargazer Fortress?" Wow, even the buddies were getting in on this. Good for them! It was a good sign of personal growth, feeling like they were part of the conversation instead of just sitting quietly until addressed.

"We're just doing maintenance on essential systems that might be relevant in the event of an alien invasion," Rain said." Oh, poot, we're going to be invaded!" Mitsuki said. Rain blinked.

"That's not what I said!"" You practically said 'this is a routine training exercise'! That's military talk for 'we're lying'!" Chloe said"Rangers are not military and I said nothing about training exercises! I said maintenance! Maintenance! You know, the thing we need to do to keep breathing and not have holes rusting through the walls?"" What are you all yelling about?" There was a moment's silence on the line and Rain grinned as she recognized the voice." Bestie!"" Rain?

"Happy surprise quickly turned cranky." Why are you calling the house instead of me?"

"You said you would be busy and to call later, so I called home to talk to everyone until you got here," she said cheerfully.

"How was work? Did you get it all done?"" Next time, call me first," Lorelei said, and she could hear how her best friend was pouting.

"I had Princess ping Domain, but I guess you asked them to tell everyone you weren't accepting calls?" There was giggling and snickering over the call for a moment." Well, as long as you call me first next time," Lorelei said. Rain could hear the pout." Rain, my dear sister, you need to get down here. Lorelei's Rainium deficiency is at an all-time low," Chloe said." Rainium is not a real thing, and I do not have a deficiency," Lorelei protested.

"I miss you and everyone too, bestie," Rain said cheerfully.

"Good news! I've got the perfect date for you to take your class up to Stargazer for a field trip!" There was a pause." Rain,"Lorelei said, and there was a dangerous tone in her voice," are my little students going to find themselves caught in the middle of an invasion?"

"Why does everyone keep assuming there's going to be an invasion? -! I'll have you know we're doing a very good job up here making sure our first contact doesn't become an invasion!"