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Inconvenient combination of powers. But if I didn't have mine I would've flunked the physical screen and I'd be Earthside. Only maybe alive and not drooling from brain damage.

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Sue does not want Aegis to die or get brain damage. He feels this so strongly he pushes it without words, as an unspoken certainty.

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He pushes the physical feeling of a smile.

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You're sure a multimedia presentation, she laughs. Heh. They want to eventually have Nina running a bootcamp for enlistees who weren't prodigies enough to get into Battle School. They think it'll suit her temperament. They note that she should be supervised.

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Sue giggles, and sends it.

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A lot of these files keep sounding like they're geared towards finding one person to do something. One commander. And backups, but it sounds like there's some one-person job they're sifting through Battle School to fill. The one guy's pushing for you, but there's other favorites too. I don't seem to be in the running. They think I'm - well, I'm inclined to summarize it as too nice, but they don't like the way I let my soldiers pick their toons apparently.

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Kuso, says Sue. You're not too nice, you're terrifying.

He means it in the most admiring possible way.
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How'm I terrifying? I'm nice to my critters, I'm nice to my soldiers, I helped everyone under my command with stuff when I could, people keep complaining about it in the comments, I'm 'soft' and 'this is why girls scarcely ever pass the test, how did this one make it through' and 'of her two violent confrontations one was defensive on a friend's behalf, one utterly passive with no move from her beyond pleading to end the engagement; she does not aggress, she does not strike preemptively, she is too nurturing to be a good soldier', recites Aegis, looking over her own files again.

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She is a goddess of vicious precision, with the will to build an empire and the intelligence to make it work, physically the perfect soldier, tactically and strategically a good enough commander to back that up and take him down in the battleroom. She is not too nice because her niceness is part of what makes her so good at what she does. That dream of his was right; she's an angel, she's an empress, she's magic, she should rule the world.

Sue pushes something to this effect.
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Eeeee.

Pushing feelings is hard, she has to lean so much on the bird-bird-bird-ing to get even words past her wall, but she sends Thank you! I feel all warm and fuzzy. Anyway, no one complains about my performance as a commander, I only lost three and they don't think it was because I did anything dumb. They're just drawing a lot on non-game behavior too because they know a lot of kids see the game as, well. A game.
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Well, their analysis is fucked, says Sue.

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It'd be hilarious if they let us comment on each other's psych reports and argue with the shrinks and colonels and whatnot.

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He snickers. Don't tempt me. Or, y'know, do.

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You'll have to do your own hack. Mine just copied the stuff, didn't give me edit privileges. What would you write?

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That any officer with his head so far up his shithole that he thinks being a girl makes you unfit for command should obviously be fired and replaced with somebody who can think with his brain instead of his balls, snorts Sue, over a mental image of a pair of terrified testicles fleeing from the shadow of her glory.

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Aegis laughs, and has to work very hard to channel all of it into the link instead of laughing aloud.

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Sue giggles back.

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Aegis wonders if she got the psych profiles of kids who just barely didn't make it. And she did, and the gender ratio is closer to even, although not close, and the profiles are shorter. It looks like the early testers are being - well, at least in spitting distance of fair to girls. A decent fraction of the tests they like are objective measures, some of them are blinded, and girls do disqualify more.

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Wonder why.

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I'm not sure. I last talked to a girl who wasn't filtered by Battle School tests six years ago, and I don't know how much to trust books.

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He snorts.

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It makes me feel weird. Weird for a Battle School kid, weird for a girl. Not, like, bad-weird. I like being a girl and being good enough to launch. But I feel all distinctive.

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Welcome to the club, Sue says cheerfully. Bet you I'm weirder.

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Mmm... I think your weirdness is more colorful. If most people are flat gray, you're tie-dyed rainbow and I'm a black-and-white pattern with lots of little details that looks gray if you stand far enough away.

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