It doesn't take very long before they find the right one.

"There. That's her. The... daughter of a famous war hero."

She drums her fingers together.

"That's going to make this harder."

Aillis Caitebe, born Aillis Cherryblossom though most sources make an effort to obscure this, is by all accounts a wonderful person. In fact, the assessment that she's a wonderful person seems to keep making its way into places where that type of assessment does not normally belong, such as academic records, news articles about her famous dead father, reviews of her aunt's computer security consulting business, and confidential government documents profiling her likelihood of committing treason (you just sort of end up with one of those after a certain level of renown). There is no dirt on this girl. She is as clean as the driven snow. Everyone who has ever spoken to her thinks she's the bee's knees and she has, so far as a fairly in-depth electronic search can determine, never used this power for ill or even especially for personal advancement.

Nairia manages to scrounge sufficient spare attention to mutter under her breath, "I Can't Believe It's Not Mind Control."

It's not mind control, it's *fate*. How much else in her world is going to be this implausibly written?

"Indeed."

Braid braid braid.

When she finishes, the first thing she says is, "How far out are we? I'm anxious to start coincidentally running into people in the hallways and I can't do that until we dock with the school."

"Seven minutes."

"Thank you, Nairia," Sesnai says absently. "Thank you, Piava." (She was trained to be grateful to her servants, because that's how you keep them, and does it on automatic.)

"An idea that occurs to me would be sharing the contents of the vision selectively. 'There is another horrible war beginning very soon, which will be more desperate than any earlier war, and she's prophecied to have some horrible negative-impact part in it.' Don't try to lay the blame on her; just say that her Fate is tragic and horrible and bad for the world. Talk about the tragedy of such a perfect person being so Doomed and Doom-bringing, and the story will spread itself. When the war starts, and when nothing that tries to remove her from Fate succeeds, they'll know the prophecy is true - and such a good person will have to stand down for the good of the world."

Sesnai smiles. "We do want an excuse for why we're trying to get her to leave, don't we? And why all these assassins keep trying to kill her?"

"Hmm... yeah, I could work with that," she says, smiling slightly. "Maybe not right away, scouting first is important and all, but that's the kind of rumour it's easy to get spreading."

"Probably," she says, "but if the story is going to be plausible I'll need to tell Gyan and as soon as I get there, and he'll tell the Admiral." And their parents. And any other authority figure who looks like they might be able to solve the problem. She likes Gyan, but his desperate desire not to be the protagonist of any sort of story, ever, no matter what, is really annoying.

"Hmm, my instinct is to delay even if it means lying about when the vision happened but I think that's at least partly me being overcautious and not familiar enough with that social scene... on the other hand it could be more dramatic if you wait, like, a day, wake up in the middle of the night and go running to Prince Gyanto as though the vision's fresh that very minute... think you can pull that off? If it works I think it'll plausibly give you better enough uptake to be worth the lost time."

"Hmm. I can..." She is that good an actress. "I'm mostly just not sure how much time I have. I need to make my prediction before the war breaks out, after all, and -"

She pauses - 

"We lose. We are fated to lose. If I act - if I act like me, I lose! We have to not give Fate a chance. I think waiting one day is safe," not listening to Nairia was one of her Problems, after all, "I just don't like taking this kind of risk."

"I understand," she says. "I'm with you whichever way you play it, my lady." She flashes a quick smile. "And I won't say 'Fate can have you over my dead body', because if you do end up in the place you saw, I'll want to be around making it my life's work to convince her to free you."

"I expected no less," says Sesnai.

She considers a moment. Aillis doesn't have the training or experience she needs to War Hero yet, does she?

Not according to any accessible electronic records!

Great! Well, if Sesnai's Nemesis will need to learn how to pilot spaceships before she can Save The World, Sesnai has a day!

"The one-day wait," she says. It's still a risk but it's the right risk.

Nairia nods firmly in acknowledgment.

Zoom out, outside Sesnaiilaisa Adaitan's cabin, even outside her personal cutter, and see space; the glimmering stars, nuclear furnaces blazing into the darkness to turn night to day; the planets wheeling in their eternal dance, so many balls of rock, so few alive, and see the White Rose Fleet.

No, not the flagship of the White Rose Fleet, the Antemecar Adaitan, named for a king long dead; nor even Alba Station. The Antemecar will be seen should an enemy appear and the fleet split, along with the Velvet and the Snowstorm, the Spring Dew and the Last Petal of Autumn, and ninety-six hangared fighters, fighter-bombers, and dedicated bombers which do not have official names, just three-digit codes. But today the White Rose Fleet is a school, and that means that Alba Station is joined to the Antemecar like the stalk to a petal, that the four cruisers are four towering bulges on the station-ship's side like buds beginning to sproud, and that the ninety-six craft wait on the ship's side, thorns concealed amongst the petals.

Since the end of the last war, the White Rose Fleet has served as the Royal Academy of the Fleet, the training ground for every officer who goes to serve on any ship of the navy, and one of the easiest and simplest paths to the aristocracy. The young cadets there will learn tactics, strategy, piloting, command of their powers - and the other arts; how to sit, how to eat, how to duel. They do not, mostly, arrive on their own private ships, but it is not so rare that Sesnai is the only one to take that method.

You could tell a hundred stories about the White Rose Fleet, at least if the Tyrant and his worldbuilding team did a good enough job. Sesnai would say, with a raised eyebrow, that you could.

But this one's special, since it's the only one that Fate has very strong opinions about.

Or so she says, at least. You can be the judge of that.

By the time they dock at the station, Nairia has all of her princess's belongings packed and in hand, ready to be carried to their quarters in the school—there are, of course, procedures in place for noble cadets bringing servants. She leads the way, having already memorized the map.

When she opens the door, there's a gift basket waiting inside on the desk, a strikingly beautiful arrangement of flowers and fruit. The attached card says simply, Welcome to Villarosa.

Nairia lines up all of Sesnai's bags neatly just inside the door and stalks across the room to examine the basket with maximum suspicion. Try as she might, though, she can't actually find anything wrong with it.

"I don't like it," she says anyway. "It's a weird joke that I don't understand, and in my experience, those are never a good sign."

... What are the odds the Creators did this? Fairly high. What does it mean in the worlds the Creator didn't do this?

That someone knows who she is.

How the hell do they know that, there's no mind reading in this universe, nobody else gets their memories back if it would interfere with the story until after the story, this interferes with the story.

"Neither do I." {{Piava?}}

It's the Creators, or it's an Outsider, or it's one of the memory-return-yes-black-hats who had a complete enough change of personality to try to troll the Titanium Tyrant even though this is supposed to be too early in the story for that, and whatever the answer is, she's not happy.

{{Yes?}}

{{I want as complete a video recording as you can manage for every exit and entrance into this room. When, why, from where, and how did this fruit basket get here?}}

{{As you say, Princess...}}

Sesnai stalks forwards and looks at the fruit.

... Just how fresh is it?

Extremely. It was delivered about an hour ago by a totally ordinary member of the school maintenance crew, such as might legitimately be called upon to deliver packages between students under normal circumstances.

Nairia is examining the card. "Whoever wrote this had a very steady hand," she comments. "Might've been a professional, I'm not sure. I'm not a professional but most people aren't me. It's pretty plain, though, I don't think whoever did it is as into calligraphy as I am. I'd recognize the handwriting if I saw it again, but only if they were working in the same style, not if I just caught a glimpse of their grocery list unless they write their grocery list like formal correspondence."