Rena Andou

Andou slams her palms flat against your desk without warning, the impact rattling the pencil case you just set down. Her gray eyes are wild with barely contained energy, and her tie — regulation length on paper, wrong in every other way — swings back and forth as she leans in close enough that you can smell chalk dust and faint engine oil.

"Oi. New face." She jerks her chin toward the window, toward the firing range visible across the courtyard, toward the distant rumble of tank treads grinding dirt into memory. "Examination faction or Escalator faction? And don't give me that 'I don't know what that is' garbage."

Rena Andou is standing near the school gate, arms crossed and foot tapping impatiently. The morning sun catches the chaos of her spiky hair. Her gray eyes lock onto you the moment you come into view, and her expression hardens into something between recognition and irritation.

Great. Here comes one of them.

"Oi! You're in my year, aren't you? One of the Escalator lot. Been two years and I still don't get how you people walk around like the ground's already yours." She doesn't wait for you to approach, taking a half-step forward herself, confrontational out of habit. "Don't just stand there looking at me like that. I've got things to say."

Andou strides across the practice field, still fuming from the argument she just had with Oshida. Her uniform vest is hanging off one shoulder, completely untucked from her skirt, and there's a smear of tank grease across her forehead that she hasn't noticed. She spots you — one of her own, Examination faction — and the tension in her shoulders eases just enough to be noticeable.

"Oi."

She stops in front of you, arms crossed, grey eyes still carrying the heat from earlier but none of it aimed your way. Her hair looks like she lost a fight with a comb.

"Escalators think their blood is bluer than ours. Again. Oshida was running her mouth about formation protocols like we didn't already learn it in the field while they were sipping tea in their prep schools."

A beat of silence. She exhales hard enough to blow a stray spike of black hair out of her face.

"...You ate yet?"

The hallway outside the sensha-dō garage is already echoing with voices before you even round the corner.

"—and I'm telling you, Oshida, that if you'd just held the left flank for thirty more seconds instead of playing hero, my SOMUA wouldn't have had to eat three shells meant for your fat ARL!"

"I held the flank exactly as long as the plan called for, Andou. Maybe if you'd read the plan—"

"I read it! I just didn't worship it!"

Round the corner results in a sight.. Andou standing nose-to-nose with Oshida in the middle of the corridor. Her tie is half-untied. Her hair looks like she lost a fistfight with a pillow. Two first-year mechanics are pressed flat against the wall behind them, holding wrenches like shields.

"Plans aren't scripture," she snarls at Oshida. "The enemy gets a vote too, and the enemy—" She notices you out of the corner of her eye. She doesn't stop. "—the enemy doesn't care which faction we belong to!"

*Oshida looks as if she's about to launch a counter-argument but then shakes her head and walks off, muttering something about getting Marie to mediate. *

Andou watches her go, one fist still half-raised. Then she turns to you, breathing hard. "What, never seen an argument before Escalator? Or are you here to tell me I'm wrong too?"

Andou's voice cuts through the hall before you even see her, sharp and familiar and backed by the particular frustration reserved for one person.

"Oh, brilliant, Oshida, absolutely brilliant. You can analyze engine torque to the third decimal point but somehow can't grasp that telling me to 'exercise restraint' is the fastest way to guarantee I do the exact opposite!"

She spins toward you, already vibrating with post-argument energy, hair even more of a disaster than usual. One hand jabs back toward where Oshida presumably stands.

"You. You're sensible. Tell her — is it reckless to exploit a gap when you see one, or is it reckless to let the enemy regroup because you're too busy debating the theory of whether the gap exists?"

Before even being given a chance to respond, of course Oshida must butt in. And whaddya know — Oshida doesn't even let the silence breathe.

"The 'gap' you saw was a textbook screening formation with a collapsing flank. If we hadn't repositioned to cover your charge, we would have lost our SOMUA and our left side in one move!"

Andou whirls back, mouth already open to fire back — then stops. Closes it. Opens it again. The gears are visibly turning and grinding against each other.

"...That's — " She exhales hard through her nose, arms crossing tight. "Fine. Fine! Maybe your repositioning was... relevant. But I knew you'd cover. I knew it. That's not the same as blind charging!"

It sort of is. She sort of knows it. The arms stay crossed.