For Aelita, every day ought to be something new.
That might sound like a meaningless platitude, but one had to consider that she lived on an underdeveloped agricultural world like Jastael.
Her purpose here was to serve as a cog in the Empire's vast production machinery, which meant enduring the same monotonous labor day after day—watching the cyclical growth of orb-wheat from sowing to harvest, gathering the nearly identical crops, and letting the land complete its own cycle alongside them.
In such an existence, not everyone had the energy to treat every day as "a new day." Most simply repeated the same stretch of life over and over within the endless loop of work.
But for Aelita, this repetition always filled her with a guilty sense of wasted time. So, amid the drudgery of her heavy labor, she did her best to seek out anything fresh and novel. As a child, it had been the ever-changing clouds on the horizon, the weeds along the field ridges that looked different from orb-wheat, or the faint rainbows cast by the misting sprinklers. As she grew older, novelty came from the intricate inner workings of the Empire's massive production machinery—though she only ever caught glimpses by sneaking after others, never truly understanding its mysteries. Still, for an uneducated young girl, it was more than enough to dazzle her.
She had once entertained absurd fantasies—like being chosen one day by a Mechanicus Magos and granted the privilege of studying such profound knowledge. She knew it was nearly impossible, but who could blame a little girl for dreaming?
But Jastael was too remote, too barren. Even the Mechanicus grew lax in maintaining the production tools here. In the seven years Aelita had clung to those wild dreams, she had only seen the tech-priests come to soothe the machine-spirits of stalled equipment a mere three times. None of those fleeting glimpses had yielded any miracles.
And then, Jagob appeared.
This mysterious outsider wasn't just "new" to all of Jastael—he also possessed a near-omniscient breadth of knowledge to a girl from an agri-world. Naturally, Aelita, who was always hungry for novelty, latched onto him.
Over the past decade, Aelita had grown accustomed to finding the freshness she craved in knowledge: she learned to read and write Low Gothic, mastered basic arithmetic, grasped some fundamental principles of physics and astronomy, and could even calculate the planetary calendar, estimating the next farming cycle before the planetary government issued its updated agricultural guidelines. In the Fourth Agricultural Production Zone, she was undoubtedly one of the most learned individuals. But it still wasn't enough—curiosity was her best teacher, and she pestered Jagob daily for new lessons.
Jagob often complained about how annoying she was, but thankfully, during the Harvest Festival, their group had traveled from the Fourth Zone—which they almost never left—to the freight depot on the outskirts of the First City. For Aelita, everything these past few days had been new and exciting, and in her joy, she had unwittingly given her teacher a break. She hadn't realized it herself, but Old Hank had teased her: "Finally giving Jagob a few days of peace, eh?"
At the time, Aelita had been a little miffed, but she quickly tossed Old Hank's remark aside—there was simply too much novelty to take in, especially after entering the First City. Everything before her eyes was something she'd never seen before, and she was overwhelmed trying to match what she saw with the stories she'd heard over the broadcast comms. She had no time to spare for an old man who spent his days tinkering with "Amasec-quality moonshine"—she couldn't fathom why anyone would enjoy something that burned like it could melt your guts.
The grain shipment had long been sorted, stored, and handed over to the tax officials for inspection and loading. Their work at the depot was technically done, but thanks to Governor Deville's generosity, they were allowed to remain for the festival instead of immediately returning to the next farming cycle.
This delighted Aelita beyond measure. She woke up early every morning to catch the first shuttle into the city, wandering around until dusk before returning. So when Old Hank slowly shuffled out into the depot's open plaza around midday to bask in the sun and spotted Aelita still nearby, it was enough to shock him.
But in the next instant, he understood why: Aelita was deep in conversation with a girl who was clearly an outsider.
——
"I thought the two of you only met this morning." Jagob—or rather, Sevatar—crossed his arms and glared down at Aelita. "Now it's noon, and you're already saying you'll go into the city with her and stay out overnight? Aren't you afraid she'll sell you off?"
Aelita planted her hands on her hips, puffing up indignantly in defense of her new friend. "No way! We've been talking all morning, and I'm sure Ritsuka's a good person! Just like you!"
"Then I think you need to reconsider your definition of 'good person.'" Sevatar muttered self-deprecatingly.
His words clearly went over her head.
"You're just paranoid about everyone!" The straw-haired, freckled girl huffed before abruptly grabbing Fujimaru Ritsuka and hoisting her up before the latter could react. "But look! Ritsuka's tiny and light—even if she wanted to do something bad, how could she possibly beat us in a fight?"
—By the metric system Fujimaru Ritsuka was more familiar with (from humanity's second millennium), she didn't consider herself short. At 159 cm, she was around average height for a teenage girl in her home country. But this was the 41st millennium, and over such an immense span of time, some genetic drift was inevitable.
So even though Aelita had grown up on an underdeveloped agri-world with scarce food rations, even though she'd been malnourished since childhood and subjected to grueling labor, even though her living conditions were far worse than Ritsuka's (who came from a middle-class background and had been "reasonably" trained by multiple Heroic Spirits), Aelita had still reached nearly 180 cm by age seventeen—and lifted Ritsuka (who, with her gear, weighed over 50 kg) over her head without breaking a sweat.
Never underestimate the lifting strength of a girl used to farm work. Even in an era where large-scale mechanized agriculture was the norm.
"...Uh, Aelita," Ritsuka said dryly, dangling in midair. "I appreciate you standing up for me, but if you keep this up, I'm going to get mad. And you—Jagob, was it? You think I can't tell you're trying not to laugh?"
Sevatar gave up holding back—he burst into laughter right as Aelita asked, confused, "Why would you be mad? You are tiny!"
To him, this was the funniest thing he'd seen in the last century. Here was an Imperial envoy—someone who could confidently claim to be a colleague of a Primarch and had Custodes as escorts on missions—being effortlessly hoisted into the air by a random farm girl on some backwater planet. Even if he'd be executed later for some trumped-up charge over this, he was going to enjoy the moment.
The good news was that Fujimaru Ritsuka didn't seem inclined to charge them with insubordination (in the Imperium, "insubordination" often just meant "offending a superior's dignity"). The bad news was that she was now flailing in midair in impotent rage. Her violent squirming made it impossible for Aelita to hold her steady, so she was set back down—only to be immediately pulled into a hug.
"You are tiny," Aelita declared, resting her chin on top of Ritsuka's head. "Tiny and cute."
"Calling me cute won't make me happy," Ritsuka grumbled, though she couldn't bring herself to protest further.
Sevatar was still laughing—a wheezing, grating sound, as if he rarely used the function and his vocal cords had rusted from disuse. Normally, Ritsuka would've mocked him for it, but right now, her attention was caught by something else. She tugged at Aelita's sleeve, which had ridden up during the earlier commotion, exposing her left forearm. "What's this?"
"Hm? Oh, that." Aelita glanced at her arm, then casually pushed her sleeve all the way up, revealing a patch of grayish-blue, abnormally textured skin that glittered like irregular scales. "It's 'Blue Ash Disease'—a chronic local illness you get from long-term exposure to Jastael's special pesticide blend. Pretty common here."
Ritsuka stared at the afflicted skin, her expression thoughtful. "...Is that so? Haven't the local doctors tried to do anything about it?"
"Well... about ten years ago, when it started spreading, Governor Deville did put out a bounty for anyone who could cure it," Aelita mused, struggling to recall details from when she was seven. "But after that... uh..."
"After that, the local quacks couldn't do anything, and since 'Blue Ash Disease' only causes superficial skin changes with no observable impact on bodily function or lifespan, the matter was quietly dropped," Sevatar cut in, having finally recovered from his laughter. "Jastael isn't exactly swimming in resources. Thanks to Governor Deville's 'generosity,' the local bureaucracy doesn't care about much beyond keeping production numbers up. There aren't any nobles here willing to throw money at cosmetic issues either, so 'Blue Ash Disease' remains 'incurable.'"
"...Is that really okay? If it's a chronic condition, ten years is nothing—some illnesses stay dormant for ages before suddenly turning fatal."
Aelita froze. With her limited and specialized knowledge, she'd never considered that possibility. Sevatar, however, answered smoothly: "This disease has been around for a while—it just became more common in the last decade. I don't know the exact pathology, but—"
He paused, deciding to give the planet's administration some credit where it was due. "—But everyone knows Jastael's Chief Agricultural Technocrat, Raj Hessting, is a severe case. He's probably had it for... twenty, thirty years? Not sure. But you can see it clearly in his year-end speeches. If it were actually dangerous, someone like him—either out of self-preservation or professional duty—would've done something about it by now."
"..."
Ritsuka didn't argue further, though she still seemed uneasy. Aelita, however, tugged at her cheerfully. "Don't worry about it! Old Hank's had it way longer—forty years, he says—and he's still kicking just fine."
She pointed to an elderly man (likely in his forties or fifties, though he looked decades older by agri-world standards) dozing on a pile of straw at the edge of the plaza. Under the warm midday sun, nearly all of his exposed skin had taken on the same glittering blue-gray hue.
"Hmm..." Ritsuka's expression turned odd. "I feel like this level of... affliction... should at least warrant a doctor's visit?"
"Sorry, princess, but folks in backwaters like this don't have that luxury," Sevatar said, his tone edging into sarcasm. *"And even by the Imperium's strictest standards, this isn't a big deal. Old Hank's only got about 83% of his skin turned blue-gray. Doesn't even count as a mutation."*
"...But what about his right hand...?"
"His hand?" Aelita tilted her head, then brightened in realization. "Oh, you mean how he's only got four fingers? That's 'cause his pinky and part of his palm got caught in a machine when he was young. After it healed, the Blue Ash skin covered the scar, so it just looks like he was born that way."
Ritsuka hesitated. "...So to you, aside from the missing finger and proportions, there's nothing else wrong with that hand. Right?"
She was addressing Aelita, but her eyes flicked to Sevatar. Puzzled, he glanced at Old Hank's hand again—and with Astartes vision, confirmed that yes, it was exactly as described.
After receiving dual assurances of "Yeah, why?", Ritsuka nodded slowly. "...I see."
She looked back at Old Hank's hand and asked, "Just to confirm—'Blue Ash Disease' is a chronic condition caused by long-term exposure to local pesticides, correct?"
In Fujimaru Ritsuka's eyes, Old Hank's right hand had taken on an almost avian claw-like structure—and a bird's claw having only four "fingers" was perfectly normal.
------
Author's Notes:
Theoretically, between 30K and 40K, Imperial language should have undergone significant phonetic drift (as seen in a Regent's short story where he couldn't understand his sons at first). But nobody's here to read about 30K Sevatar and a 7-year-old girl failing to communicate, so I've handwaved the language barrier (and will continue to do so).
Ritsuka's physique is based on Rin Tohsaka's stats. And since "Devil Muscles Rin" (who does work out) was only 47 kg at 17, all complaints should be directed at Nasu. Japanese people, I swear you have no sense of height/weight ratios.
I wanted to write a shopping trip AND advance the plot. The plot won (obviously). What I really need is a "beach episode" full of banter, bullying bats (??), messing with corn (????), and harassing cans (??????). But first, the bat needs therapy, the corn needs peeling, and the cans need to actually appear...