2022-08-10: Who The Hell Do You Think I Am?

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0096.07.28, PLANTs

Suzuha sat at the table where she was supposed to meet her mother for lunch. She was resting her elbow on the eating surface, her cheek pressed against the hand balled into a fist as she looked off across the plaza. Some colony under reconstruction by ZAFT forces, she assumes. She has no idea why she was invited all the way out here. She's even more at a loss as to why she agreed to come. Who cares if her mother wants to have lunch with her? Why does everything always have to revolve around her mom's schedule? Okaa-san this, Okaa-san that.

And yet, here she is. Seated at the outdoor dining area of a bistro. Apparently Tsugumi Saionji had even BEEN here, but then left before Suzu got here? Some message was left with the waiter to give to her. It amounted to, 'Had some business come up. I will be back as soon as possible. Wait for me here.' Not a request, and no apology for the wasted time, or for being an absent mother Suzu's entire life. Just, 'Sit down, shut up, and I'll get to you when it's convenient for me.'

"Tch." she let out between her teeth. She looked at her wrist communicator to see the time. Two hours and fifty-seven minutes past their meet-up time. It was about to be dinner rush now, and the wait staff had been hovering around sending out intense vibes of, 'order or gtfo' for at least half the time she'd been sitting here.

Eventually, with one minute to spare, Suzu's mom strolled up and seated herself.

"Something came up. That took longer than I was expecting." Tsugumi's voice reached Suzu's ears despite the crowd and her still being faced away.

Suzu didn't even respond. There was a time when being dragged all the way out to some distant part of space for lunch with a woman who was more stranger than family, and then being stood-up for nearly three hours, would have had her red-faced, shouting, making a scene to try to embarrass Tsugumi or at least to make her birther feel a speck of the resentment, anger, and hurt that had been inflicted on her.

Now, she just couldn't even look at her mom. She barely had any idea what her mom did for a living. But it took priority over Suzu every time, it seemed.

Her mother kept talking to her, while waving down an obviously relieved waiter to order for the both of them, but Suzu wasn't paying attention.

"I understand that you're upset, but I had to attend to urgent business--" Tsugumi began.

"Wow. What a surprise." Suzu muttered very much audibly and sarcastically. She couldn't take it anymore. Suzuha Saionji pushed herself up onto her feet. "We both know which of your 'prior engagements' takes priority. Let's not waste anymore time pretending you would have been here for once even if the business wasn't urgent."

With that, and without even looking at her mother once during the interaction, Suzu simply walked away.

0096.08.01 Zum City, Side 3

Suzu squinted and covered the lower half of her face with a cloth as she dug through dusty old papers, electronic devices from almost two decades ago, keepsakes that held no meaning to Suzu, and a bunch of other crap in the office her mother never used. It was more of a place to dump things briefly before leaving again. Suzuha's mother was such a pristine clean-freak that she had no idea that her mom could also be such a disorganized packrat too.

She was tired of not knowing what her mother really did for a living. Oh, she knew it was something to do with being a private contractor for the military or something, but that was about it. All of her mother's friends, the ones who had raised her instead of her own parent, were pretty tight-lipped about the past of the group called "Crescent". But they had taken pity on her enough to teach her about machines, how to pilot a Mobile Worker, and how to defend herself. It used to be that, when she was praised for her accomplishments and compared to her mother, she was happy about it. She saw it as another step closer to her mother wanting her around.

Now it annoyed her. Even if it also secretly pleased her a little bit still too.

She wasn't expecting to get answers on anything about her family from the Crescent crew, but some of the things she came across in her search definitely had her eyebrows raising until they practically reached her hairline. Military transcripts, a handgun (!), an old Principality of Zeon uniform in a silver case (!!!), various medals and awards (!?), schematics (???)... But the last few things she found are the really big bombshells. A photograph of a bald older man with a moustache and goatee, in a black uniform with red and gold trim, and a much younger girl by his side in a similar uniform. The girl is standing... REALLY close to the older man. At least in Suzu's opinion. Also, is the girl pregnant? Suzuha has a sinking feeling in her gut. There's no way she wouldn't recognize that girl as her mother. The woman she knows and that teenager barely look different at all aside their figures and the effects of age. Also, her mom has a really intense "resting death stare", while the girl in the picture is actually SMILING.

The photo looks like it was cut out of a larger one. Why in the hell would her mom isolate just part of a photograph with her in it, to put her with that older man, other than the obvious? Also, her mom was in the military even back THEN? How old was she at that time!? And PREGNNANT!?!

No one would ever talk to Suzu about her father. As the pieces all started to click together, she felt her world spinning. Was the reason they wouldn't tell her... Because her father was some sort of... Well, you know!?

Suzu had to leave the office for a moment, to lower the cloth from her face and get some fresh air. As she stood in the hallway outside of the room, looking out over the traditional Neo-Japanese garden, Suzu found she had more questions than ever before, and she was no longer sure she wanted the answers.

As she looked at the photo, rubbing her thumb over the young girl her mom used to be, right over the belly, she noticed that the photo was... 'thicker' in places than in others. Getting a hunch, she smashed the wooden picture frame against the wall behind her unhesitatingly, feeling no need to preserve her mom's things (after all, what's gonna' happen to her? Is her mom going to come back from wherever the hell she is now just to yell at her? That'd be fine. It would mean Suzu could demand some answers). What came out from behind the photo was nothing Suzu could have expected.

They were papers. Identification papers. Additional photographs. All stuffed in the matting of the frame. As she sorted through them, trying to understand what she was seeing, her heart climbed up into her throat as she looked upon a young man who bore such a strong resemblance to her that she couldn't really process what she was looking at initially.

He was older than her, dressed in a Neo-Zeon uniform, but the family resemblance was obvious.

Suzuha read the name on the identification papers and then looked back at the collection of photographs, including one of a child who looked much like the older man.

"...Who in the fuck is 'Ryo Ooshiro'?" she whispered.

Suzuha had no way to be sure, but she suspected that the living family members she was aware of had just increased by one.

0096.08.04 Slums, Side 3

"Hey, Mikael." Suzuha said by way of announcing her presence as she picked through the crusty, cluttered, garbage-strewn shack that one of her friends called their 'business office'.

An overweight teenager in a stained shirt and shorts in a style centuries out of date turned in his seat to the best of his ability, an array of computers and tech devices Suzu could scarcely identify composing half of the room. His expression brightened up at the sight of Suzu and he responded back, "Hey, hey, Neko-chan!"

"Don't call me that," Suzuha replied reflexively. Honestly, wear a cat onesie to a sleep over at a friend's house ONE TIME and they never let you live it down. Looking through the shelves spaced apart more by the stuff on them than any sort of wall fastenings, Suzu tried to make her way deeper inside without stepping on anything.

"So what brings you to my neck of the woods?" Mikael asked, scratching at his throat where a thin coat of facial hair was growing like some sort of parasitic moss trying to eat his face, before turning back to the data feeds and whatever else he had going on.

With trepidation, Suzuha steeled herself and said, "I need a favor."

Mikael turned his seat again, the chair torn straight from a destroyed Zaku II's cockpit creaking in protest as it leaned to the side while attempting to swivel on a metal pole that Mikael had planted in the dirt. He looked surprised. "From me? What, do you need your records changed again? What did you do this time, pick a fight with some Feddie asshole?"

Suzuha shook her head, sighing over the fact that 'being a troublemaker' is what she was known for by her closest friends. It's not like it wasn't true, but come on, she hadn't knocked anyone out in, like, at least three weeks! Okay, maybe more like two weeks. Alright, fine it was eight days ago, but he was asking for it! "No, not exactly." She holds out a leather-bound journal full of the papers, identification, and other assorted documents she had discovered the other day. "I need these doctored so that I can become the person in these documents."

Mikael accepted the book as it was offered to him, flipping it open and reading through it with a confused frown. His furrowed brow became much less furrowed as his eyebrows start climbing towards the hairline hidden beneath the brim of his baseball cap, in an unknowing imitation of what Suzu's had done when she first saw these same documents. "That's, uhhh..." He cleared his throat and looked up. "Do you realize what these are?"

Suzu shook her head. "Not entirely. I know they're military identification, commercial pilot's license, and various other things like that."

Mikael stared back at the spikey-haired girl nearby, disbelievingly. "Yeah. 'Things like that'. Sooz, these are NEO-ZEON military records, identification, combat deployment, insignia--"

Suzuha interrupted, "Look, I know, alright!?" It came out more harshly than intended, so she softened her voice and said, "I get it. This isn't kid stuff. But that's why I came to you. You're the only one I know who can help me with this... The only one who can handle something this big."

Mikael's expression was conflicted as he listened to Suzu's plea. "I don't want you to be taken away, Sooz." He said with genuine concern and a bit of desperation in his voice.

Despite herself, Suzu felt her heart melt a bit. Smiling lopsidedly, she said, "Hey, it's me."

Rolling his eyes, Mikael turned around to face the computer. "You better know what you're doing. Normally only really desperate people or really scary people come to me for stuff like forging documents." As he pulled up some kind of software and began scanning the papers into his computer, his other hand extended outwards. "I'll need pix."

Suzu nodded, relieved that Mikael was going along with this. She really had no one else to go to if he'd refused. "Yeah, I got 'em right here. You can use these in place of the ones in those--"

"No, not THOSE pictures." Mikael said as he turned to look at Suzu with a grin. "YOUR pix."

Now it was time for Suzuha to roll her eyes as she reached into her jacket and pulled out an envelope. "Yeah, yeah, I got THOSE too. Pervert."

Looking mock-wounded, Mikael took both the photos to doctor into the identification papers and the envelope, and said, "Hey, I normally charge money for this kind of work. You're lucky you're both my friend and cute as hell."

Suzuha just folded her arms and scowled. What kind of weirdo asks for photos of her in that damnable black-and-white cat mascot pajama onesie as payment?

Shaking her head in dismay as her friend worked his digital magic, she just muttered again, "Pervert."

0096.08.08 Near the Space Port, Zum City, Side 3

A teenage boy with short, messy, spiked black hair, dressed in a white t-shirt, over-sized green jacket with the faded gold emblem of the Principality of Zeon, and blue jeans, stood in line. He was waiting to board a transport to Earth.

When it got to be his turn, he started to walk forward when some grunt grabbed at his shoulder and gruffly admonished, "Hey! You can't wear that Zeke crap! Who do you think--"

The boy jerked away, slapping the man's arm aside, and held up his ID. "Who the hell do you think I am!?"

As the guard looked at the ID, other security personnel started to come over to help. The first guard, shaking his head, held up an arm to wave them off. "Anaheim, huh? I guess they'll take anyone." Stepping back, the man allowed the teenaged boy to proceed, but not before adding on, "Man, the test pilots are just getting younger and younger."

After getting his electronic travel papers verified, the youth began his ascent to the transport that would take him to his new life. The lady handling the boarding procedures bowed her head and said in a sing-song customer service voice, "Have a nice flight, Mister Ryo Ooshiro."

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