Nora Southwell Ozaki wiped the steam from the mirror and regarded herself for a moment. Her wet hair, darkened from its usual auburn to a near-black brown by the water, lay plastered across her forehead. The water dripping down her face did nothing to hide the dark smudges under her eyes. Swiping the hair aside, she leaned her forehead against the cool glass for a few seconds, then picked up her toothbrush, fumbled it, and dropped it in the sink.

"Welp... I guess it's time for this shit again," she sighed, retrieving it.

She was standing in front of the refrigerator, washing a pair of Analgesols down with a swig of orange juice straight out of the carton, when Baxter 208's second bedroom opened and her roommate emerged in rumpled Boko Bear pajamas, her hair askew.

"Mrnmg," Miho Nishizumi mumbled, trudging past the kitchenette toward the bathroom.

"Morning, Miho," Nora replied. She finished off the OJ, dropped the carton into the trash bin, and then leaned back against the closed fridge, arms folded, to await her roommate's return.

When Miho came back a few minutes later, Nora went on as though the pause hadn't happened, "You look like I feel."

Miho rubbed briskly at her face, blinked a few times, and shook her head. Then, a bit more awake, she said with a self-deprecating smile, "Sorry, Nora. Wasn't quite awake yet..."

Nora gave her a wry little grin. "I noticed." Then, angling her head toward Miho's bedroom door, she added offhandedly, "Yukari still in bed?"

"Ye—" Miho began, then skidded to a verbal halt and stared in surprise at Nora, a deep blush slowly climbing out of the collar of her PJ top and up her face. "... How did you know?" she asked after a few baffled seconds.

Nora tapped the right side of her head with a finger. "Bionic ear," she said, and then, in a stage whisper, "Hears everything." She shrugged and added ruefully, "Whether I want it to or not..."

Miho's blush deepened somehow, spreading to her ears, and with wide eyes she objected, "B-b-but there was nothing to hear!"

Nora grinned a cheesy grin and made dual finger guns. "Gotcha."

After taking a few seconds to pull herself together, Miho tried to look indignant, folding her arms and scowling. "Honestly. We just lost track of time talking and stayed up past lockout, that's all. We weren't..." She hesitated, ears reddening again, then blurted, "Doing anything."

Nora shrugged nonchalantly and turned to open the cereal cabinet. "Hey, it's no skin off my back if you were. I ain't your mom."

"We've only known each other for a couple of weeks."

"It do be like that sometimes," said Nora sagely. "You want Frosted Flakes? I'm havin' Frosted Flakes. They're grrrreat, as you know."

They were eating cereal and chatting quietly when Miho's bedroom door opened again, this time producing their friend Yukari Akiyama—still dressed in last night's civvies and with her thick, wavy hair, never particularly orderly, now more of a downright fright wig.

"I fell asleep!" she announced, sounding dismayed unto the edge of panic.

"That'll happen," Nora agreed with a nod. "Pull up a chair. Frosted Flakes? Or we've got instant oatmeal. Or belgad ramen, if you're into that at 0844."

"Why didn't you wake me, Miho-dono?!" Yukari demanded, looking for her shoes.

"There wouldn't have been any point," Miho said. "It was already after midnight. I thought it would be best to let you sleep."

"I'm gonna be in so much trouble," Yukari fretted, balancing on one foot while trying to put a shoe on the other one without untying it first.

"Yukari," said Nora in a less bantering tone. When her friend didn't acknowledge, she raised her voice slightly, using a tone she'd originally developed for commanding a tank. "Akiyama."

Yukari snapped to as if in combat, turning quickly (and nearly falling, since she was still on one foot, the other half-shod). "Yes?"

Nora pointed to one of the two empty chairs at the kitchen table. "Calm down, cool down, siddown before you fall down."

Yukari did as instructed, but was clearly still worried. "I wonder what they do to you for staying out all night?"

"That's between you and your RA," Nora said. "Who is your RA?"

"Natsuki Kruger."

"OK, yeah, you're screwed." When Yukari started to go pale, Nora shoved the cereal box toward her. "Calm down, I'm kidding. Kruger's not bad, she's just drawn that way." So saying, she fished her multicomm out of her sweatpants pocket, thumbed it to life, and raised it to her ear.

"What are you doing?" Yukari asked, and then fear took hold of her face again as Nora spoke, not to her, but to the phone,

"Kruger? Southwell Ozaki here. Yes, I do know what time it is, but I also know that you're up at 0630 every day, so don't give me that." She grinned. "Yeah, yeah. Listen, before you send Odo's crew out looking for your lost lamb, she's over here. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah, I figured you might like to know she wasn't out raising hell all night. ... Stayed up 'til all hours talking armored warfare with Field Marshal Nishizumi, what else? Uh-huh. Sure, hang on." She lowered the device slightly and said to Yukari, "She says be more careful next time, and maybe think about calling."

Then, returning her attention to the call, she asked, "What's that? Well, I could've texted, but then I wouldn't have gotten to hear your voice. What? How dare you doubt a maiden's heart?" Whatever Natsuki said in reply to that was loud enough for both Miho and Yukari to hear it as a tinny scratching noise, but not make out any of the words. Nora laughed. "Fine, fine. Hey, listen, thanks for not making a big deal out of this. I'll tell 'em. OK. Southwell Ozaki out." She switched off the multicomm and put it away, looking pleased with herself. "There! Sorted. She says next time you have an all-night tactics symposium, let her know in advance."

"I can't believe you just did that," said Yukari and Miho together.

"What? It worked out, didn't it? I told you she's not as mean as she looks."

After breakfast, Miho took herself off to shower, and Yukari left to do the same at her own quarters. Finding herself alone in the living room, Nora slumped into the couch, all the cheerful insouciance she'd been mustering for Miho and Yukari's benefit threatening to dissipate into a haze of aches and ennui. That was no way to spend a Saturday, so she got out her multicomm again and keyed a different stored code.

"Medlab," said a calm woman's voice, which Nora recognized as belonging to the Minbari receptionist she'd seen on her last visit to Babylon 6.

"Uh... hi, this is Nora Southwell Ozaki, I'm a patient of Dr. Ido-Spengler's?"

It occurred to her as she said it that she had no idea whether Doc Ido actually had any other patients at his office on Bablyon 6. She knew he'd been semi-retired when he'd been called in on her case; he might conceivably just have taken digs up there to keep tabs on his most recent work.

Pulling her head away from that unproductive line of thought, she went on, "Sorry for calling on a Saturday, but I'm pretty sure it's time to do the thing again."

"Of course," said the receptionist. "Please wait a moment."

It was more like several moments, and when a voice returned to the other end of the line, it was a different one. "Hello, Nora. It's Dr. Ido-Spengler here. You're having CAS symptoms?"

"Either that or I picked up a Melvaran mudflea someplace," Nora replied wryly. "I hate to make you work on a weekend, but..."

"Not at all," the doctor assured her. "It's what I'm here for. Actually, your timing's not bad at all. I have something here that I think will make life easier for both of us. Are you on campus?"

"Yeah. I can get down to the bus station in half an hour or so—"

"No need," said Ido. "I'll come to you."

Miho was mildly surprised, upon returning to the living room, to discover that Nora had been joined there by a tall, thin, friendly-faced man in a doctor's coat, who was in the process of setting up some unfamiliar piece of equipment on the coffee table while Nora took off her StuG Life t-shirt.

"Oh! Sorry," Miho said, and changed course to head for her bedroom instead of her usual armchair.

"No worries, stick around if you want," Nora said. Bending forward, she started rolling the legs of her sweats up above her knees, continuing as she did so, "This is Doc Ido-Spengler. He glued me back together after... well. After. Doc, this is my roomie, the one and only Miho Nishizumi."

"Uh, nice to meet you," said Miho, a touch diffidently.

The doctor inclined his head graciously. "Miss Nishizumi," he said. "A pleasure."

Miho sat down in her chair and watched curiously while Dr. Ido-Spengler finished setting up the device he'd brought with him. It was about the size of a small suitcase, and indeed seemed to be built into such a valise, its top unfolding in a way that put Miho in mind of an old-fashioned catalog case to reveal a high-tech control panel and a row of what looked like plug sockets. While Miho looked on, the doctor took a set of coiled-up leads out of a compartment on the side of the case and plugged them into the sockets, then started affixing them to various places on Nora's body—upper and lower arms, calves, lower thighs, dotted here and there around her torso—with adhesive pads.

"The leads are color-coded," he explained to Nora as he worked. "There's a diagram inside the lid of the case showing where each one should be attached."

Nora nodded. "Got it."

"There are four more sets of these pads in the case as well," the doctor went on, sticking one to the side of her neck as he spoke. "When you use the last set, just call my office and we'll send some more down so you have them for the next time. There. Comfortable?"

Wired up like a droid in for diagnostics, Nora chuckled a little wryly. "As much as can be expected," she said.

Ido-Spengler smiled and turned to the device. "We'll be able to improve on that soon, I trust," he said, and then he pressed the large green button in the middle of the exposed faceplate. It beeped, and then the machine began emitting an almost imperceptible hum.

"It's not as dramatic as the multi-purpose cyberconfigurator in my office," said the doctor apologetically, "and it takes longer to work. On the plus side, though, you don't have to be sedated. You'll still need a full lab checkout every three months, but in between them, you won't have to come up to the station—or soldier through a whole day of cybernetic adjustment syndrome before you get the chance."

Nora grinned. "That's great. Thanks, Doc."

"You're very welcome," Ido-Spengler replied with a kind smile. "I'm sorry it wasn't ready when you first came here, but these things take a while to build. I had to have the data from at least three full configurator runs before I could order it."

"Speaking of which... it's only been a little while since that last one," said Nora. "Before that, I went a couple months. What's up with that?"

"I can't say for sure without more data to go on," Ido said, perching himself in the chair opposite the sofa, "but my working hypothesis is that it's been long enough since your reconstruction that your body has mostly recovered from the shock and adjusted to the new systems, and now you're entering a normal growth period."

Nora blinked at him, then let her head fall back against the couch cushion. "So this is going to keep happening more often? Ugh."

Ido-Spengler shook his head. "Probably not. Every patient is different, and as I told your other friend when you came to my office, adolescence is a particularly tricky time, but once your growth rate stabilizes, so should the recalibration period. Right now it's thrown off because the rate of change is itself changing, if you follow the distinction."

"Mm. Well, if you say so." She sighed. "Maybe I should've gone full robot after all." She raised her head, cheeks reddening, and added hastily, "No offense! That was a joke. I don't mean to sound like I'm not grateful for everything you've done."

The doctor laughed. "None taken, Nora." Then, becoming serious again, he went on, "I know it's frustrating. I can only repeat what I told you and your parents when we all chose this course together: It can be a rough path, but it leads to the best outcome."

Nora nodded. "I know. Really, I do." Then she grinned her slightly cockeyed grin again and said, "I just gotta vent sometimes."

"I quite understand." Ido-Spengler rose and came around to check the front of the calibrator.

While they'd been talking, a row of green indicator lights had started to come on, one at a time, starting at the far left side of the panel. So far, five of them had lit up, one every minute or so, and another came on while he watched. He got a medical tricorder out of his pocket and played it over his patient for a moment, considering its readings, then put it away again with a satisfied nod.

"Everything's proceeding normally. If you don't mind, I'll stay here until this run concludes, just to be sure."

All told, it took about an hour, at the end of which, the doctor uncabled Nora from the machine and packed everything away.

"How do you feel?" he asked.

Nora winced slightly as she peeled the left-behind electrode pad off her neck, then said, "A lot better than I did before. Kinda tired, though."

Ido-Spengler nodded. "That's normal. It should pass in an hour or so. Some patients find it helps to have a nap when the cycle is over—or even while it's going on."

"Sounds like a plan," Nora agreed. She finished taking the pads off her torso, then put her shirt back on and got up, stretching. "No pain, though!" she said with a grin. "I'll take it."

"Well then, I'll get out of your hair. Oh—before I go, let me give you this." He got a card out of his pocket and handed it to Nora. "It's my personal comm code. If you have any questions or problems, you can reach me on that any time, day or night, without having to go through Medlab. Please don't hesitate. Your care is my highest priority."

Coming from another man, even another doctor, it might have sounded smarmy, or even cheesy, but Miho, looking on, was struck by how simple and sincere the declaration felt. Of course, Nora's case would be a high-profile one, but this was not a doctor with anything to prove. Something in the way he said it convinced her that he simply wanted his patient to be well, and intended to do everything in his power to make that happen.

"Thanks again, Doc," said Nora, tucking the card away. "For everything."

"You're welcome. Take it easy for an hour or two, and then you can get on with enjoying your weekend, all right? A pleasure to meet you, Miss Nishizumi." Then, moving to the middle of the room, the doctor tapped the medical badge he wore on his coat and said, "Ido-Spengler to B6 Control. One to beam up, please."

"Roger that, Doctor, stand by," replied a voice, and a moment later, with a smiling wave, he disappeared in a wash of blue-white light.

"Showoff," said Nora with a little smile. Then, flopping back onto the couch, she put her feet up and stretched out. "Think I'm gonna take his advice and grab a nap, if you don't mind. Don't let me sleep through lunch."

Miho chuckled and headed for her room. "OK, rest well."

True to the doctor's assurance, Nora was back to her usual self by midday. The two roommates were just discussing whether to go out for lunch, and if so where, when the doorbell rang. Miho went to get it and found Yukari, looking excited, and their friends Saori Takebe and Hana Isuzu, looking curious and bemused respectively.

"I've got it," said Yukari without preamble.

"Got what?" Miho asked, puzzled, as she stood aside to let them all in.

"Pardon the intrusion," said Hana reflexively, bowing.

"We met this one halfway across the Common and she insisted we come with her," said Saori with a fond eyeroll in Yukari's general direction.

"C'mon in, I can't wait to hear what this is about now," said Nora.

They gathered on and around the couch while Yukari, all but quivering with anticipation, sat on the floor between it and the coffee table and set up her portable computer. Seeing her glee, Nora couldn't help but be struck by a mental comparison to an excitable dog. Perhaps some sort of spaniel? She shook off the thought as Yukari began speaking, scrolling through information on the screen as she did.

"OK. First of all, the Luchs is a reproduction. The two original survivors are still accounted for in their museums on Earth. Of course, ours is set up for IAF standard Armorsport, and it's obviously not a retrofit, so we already knew that, but I had to check. Next, I ran the VIN against the Galactic Joint Vehicle Registration System, but that was a dead end. Its prior record is sealed."

"Sealed?" said Saori. "I didn't know you could do that."

"Some planets have pretty hardcore privacy laws," Yukari told her. "But that's information in its own right, that narrows down where it must have come from. So then I took a look at what I could find out from decoding the VIN itself." She pointed to the screen. "See the MN prefix? That means it was built by Maschinenfabrik Augsburg Niogi AG. That's confirmed by the next part, VK1303, because MAN is the only maker of repro tanks that's obsessed enough with authenticity to use their original wartime VK numbers in its VINs."

"OK...?"

"Now, MAN builds a bunch of different German tanks for a lot of different Armorsport teams around that part of the Federation. Have done for years, they're the leading supplier of panzers in those parts. But," Yukari said with an upraised finger, "they only made VK 13.03s in a very limited run for a special order, 50 years ago. Twenty of them, all for the same customer."

"Well, don't keep us in suspense..." Nora prompted.

"C'mon, Nora. Who else could afford to special-order 20 rare tanks from Niogi's prime boutique panzer factory in one go and has a team big enough to use them? Only the top Panzerspiel school on the planet." She tapped a key dramatically, bringing up a large, distinctive graphic: A white-edged black cross pattée on a grey background, emblazoned across the middle with three Japanese characters.

"Kuromorimine Girls' Academy," said Yukari with a note of triumph in her voice.

For a moment, the only response was a startled silence.

"Is... isn't that your old school, Miho?" asked Hana quietly.

Miho, gazing at the emblem on the screen, looked like she'd seen a ghost. "It... it is, yes," she said, and then, shaking herself out of her reverie, she went on, "But that doesn't make any sense."

"Does Kuromorimine even use Panzer IIs?" Nora wondered. "I never heard of them operating any design older than Tiger I."

Miho seemed unable to speak, but Yukari shook her head. "No, not for years. Not since they got permission from the IAF to start fielding the E series. Someone must have pulled our Luchs out of deep storage—which implies that whoever it was had some serious history with the program, to even know that they had it."

"'Our' Luchs, Yukari? Really?" asked Saori with mild sarcasm.

"You know what I mean," Yukari said, blushing. Then, seeming to notice Miho's shocked, downcast demeanor for the first time, she blinked and asked hesitantly, "Uh... Miho-dono? Are you all right?"

"I'm..." Miho paused, then pulled herself together and mustered a smile. "I'm OK, Yukari. Thanks. I'm just... surprised. And confused. I can't imagine anybody at Kuromorimine would give me one of the school's tanks, let alone pay what it must have cost to ship it here from Niogi. I..." She hesitated. "... didn't leave on good terms."

"Well," said Nora philosophically, "maybe somebody over there misses you more than you thought."

"Maybe," Miho replied quietly.

"I think a better question than who might be why," said Saori pragmatically. "I mean... what are they expecting you to do with it? This school doesn't even have an Armorsport program."

Before anyone could respond, the doorbell rang.

"Well, aren't we popular today," Nora remarked, edging around the rest of the crew to answer the door.

Somewhat to her surprise, she found that the person on their threshold was Anzu Kadotani, a Student Council member whom she knew only by sight, and as far as she was aware, Miho didn't know at all—and what was more, she had a faculty member with her.

"Councilor Kadotani?" said Hana, sounding as surprised as Nora felt.

"And Professor Fujiwara!" Yukari added.

"Come on in," Nora said, gesturing. "What brings you by?"

"Ah, good, you're all here," said Anzu, not really by way of reply. "That'll save time."

"Time for what?" Saori wondered.

Entering the living room like she owned the place, Anzu plunked herself down in the chair Dr. Ido-Spengler had occupied earlier in the day, crossed her legs at the knee, and flourished what appeared to be a file folder with an official-looking document paperclipped to it. Drawn along in her wake, Professor Fujiwara no Moko of the MechTech department ended up standing alongside the chair, hands in her jumpsuit pockets, not seeming too much the wiser than the councilor's audience.

"As Chairwoman of the Student Council's Activities Committee," said Anzu importantly, "it's my duty to determine whether there are areas of student interest that the Institute's existing recreational and cultural opportunities don't cover, and if so, to make sure those gaps are filled wherever possible. To that end, and having observed such a gap in recent days, I've taken the liberty of establishing a club for you."

Resuming her place at the end of the couch, Nora inquired, "Uh... what?"

"It's all set up," Anzu went on, as if someone had objected that it wasn't, whatever it was. "I've filed the relevant documents with Dean Montaigne's office. Professor Fujiwara here is all lined up to be your faculty advisor." When their eyes turned to her, Fujiwara gave them an I-just-work-here sort of shrug and let Anzu keep talking. "All you need to do is elect your officers and you're in business." She indicated several blanks on the form she held, each marked with a colored sticky-tape flag. "Just sign here, here, and here," she concluded, tossing the document onto the coffee table next to Yukari's laptop.

Yukari picked up the form and examined it, while the others crowded in to look over her shoulders.

"'Deedlit Satori Mandeville Memorial Institute Office of Student Activities,'" Saori read aloud, "'by these presents does hereby constitute and charter a new campus club pursuant to Bylaw 33.1, Organization of Student-Run Activity Clubs, to be known henceforth as the DSM...'" She trailed off, eyebrows rising in surprise, and left it to Hana to speak the final two words aloud, in a tone of mounting bafflement:

"'... Armor Club'."

There was a brief pause while the five girls gathered on and around the couch glanced at each other in varying degrees of consternation. No one seemed to know what to say.

It was Yukari who finally broke the silence, and slightly to her compatriots' surprise, she wasn't pleased.

"You just went ahead and set up this club without asking any of the people you assumed would be members first?" she demanded. "How presumptous can one person be? You have access to students' personal files, don't you? Did you bother to check any of them? If you had, you should know—"

"Relax, Akiyama," said Anzu with a cheery laugh. "It doesn't say 'ArmorSPORT Club', does it? I haven't talked to anybody at the IAF or FISB about it, or anything like that. I'm not expecting any of you to go into competition, don't be ridiculous. It's just like the Mecha Club—they're not all members of the Friday Night Firefight team, are they? Some of them just enjoy 'Mechs and spending time with like-minded individuals." Sitting back insouciantly in her chair, she went on, "It's just for enthusiasts, which the five of you obviously are, and I'd be remiss in my duties as chair of the Activities Committee if I didn't look after your needs."

Saori and Hana looked at each other as if to say, How did we get dragged into this?

"Of course," Anzu continued breezily with a knowing little smile, "as an official club, you'll get a slice of the Student Activities budget and a suitable facility—so you can stop sponging your parking, storage, and fuel off the Motor Club..."

Yukari hesitated, fully aware that she was about to reject an offer that she would have given her right arm to receive just a couple of weeks before—but on general principles she was about to, all the same, when her surprise of a few moments before was rekindled by an unexpected sound from beside her:

Miho Nishizumi was giggling. Quietly, with reserve, but giggling, all the same. Hearing it, everyone paused in whatever objections or arguments they might have been about to make and turned to look at her.

"It sounds like fun to me," she said.

DSM Panic! The Panzermädchen Files
File 04: "Charter Members"
a Future Imperfect Mini-Story by Benjamin D. Hutchins
special to the Eyrie Productions Discussion Forum
© 2022 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited