Chapter Text
“Where is her shirt?”
“She tore it off.”
“Why?”
“Fuck if I know. She just won’t wear it today.”
“But the bike shorts are fine?”
“Apparently.”
Callie groaned. You leave your roommate with the ejected titan pilot for four hours to see if the grocer received enough food for you and yours to eat for the next week, and you expect nothing significant to happen. What you do not expect is to walk into the door to see the pilot forward rolling across the floor, tits out, giggling to herself while your roommate watches, disinterested.
“She figured out how to do that,” Mack said, gesturing to the pilot, who was now attempting to roll backwards, “and only knocked the floor lamp over twice, so I figured I’d let her tire herself out.”
Callie unshouldered the backpack she’d brought with her in hopes the grocer had gotten a recent enough delivery. It wasn’t quite as full as she’d’ve liked, but it was enough for them to work with. Enough dehydrated food for the three of them, and a few treats to keep morale up. Luckily the nearby water mains hadn’t been too damaged in the battle, so their food wouldn’t be too chalky.
When the Armorers had advanced their soldiers into town two weeks ago, everyone had hoped it wouldn’t be for long. The Inner Defenses heard word and sent a small suppression and intimidation force. It was composed of one Orcinus class Titan and a small contingent of ground forces. The news had said that the Defense force was ordered not to engage in any conflict, and that this was likely a show of force. On the groundshaking day, things were not so showy. A recoilless rifle shot to the shoulder of the Orcinus Titan threw it off balance, and when it went to return fire, three more shells impacted its knee joints and weapon. A magazine detonation later and the titan stumbled, then fell forward, its arm breaking off. It had a hole the size of a school bus punched in it. As it fell, a small, smoky explosion on its back concealed an ejection pod. A battle kicked off south of the titan.
In the days since, the armorers had moved their lines past the titan, controlling more of the small town, small skirmishes breaking out here and there. Callie and Mack’s apartment building was north of where the titan fell, so they watched through a window, probably unadvisedly, as the titan’s ejection pod arced through the air and landed 100 feet from their front door. They waited until the gunfire in the distance stopped, mostly, and slipped out in the evening sun to the pod, wondering if the pilot had lived.
Mack had punched the blinking light panel before Callie could get a word in, and they both stepped back a few feet as gas hissed out of the pod, and the canopy cracked itself open. They stood, hands in pockets, waiting to see someone fall out, or something similar. When nothing happened after a minute, they approached slowly, squinting through the apparent steam billowing from the pod. A lithe, pale form lay still strapped into the seat, mostly nude. A high tech helmet lay in her lap, thankfully covering her crotch. Her blond hair flowed across bare shoulders and she snored lightly.
The pilot was literally just sleeping in the pod.
The roommates looked at each other, at the pilot, back at each other and shrugged, then Callie, with a little difficulty, unstrapped and lifted the pilot from the pod. They carried her bridal style back to their apartment, and laid her on the couch. She seemed completely unharmed, just asleep.
She slept until the next afternoon. They’d traded watching her (though Mack had mostly just watched anime on a personal airscreen, and jumped at the occasional distant artillery fire.) and when she’d finally stirred, Callie was on watch, sitting at the kitchen table eating dry cereal with a fork.
She quietly got up, walked over to the supine pilot and waited, hands in pockets until the pilot's eyes fluttered open, and locked onto Callie.
“Morning. Hungry?” Callie asked, unceremoniously. The pilot nodded, and said only,
“Tea.”
The first day was weird.
She wouldn’t talk. Not that she couldn’t, just that she seemed entirely unused to the idea of it. Like she had never really been expected to. She seemed to be able to understand language, but wasn’t very comfortable wrangling it herself. She’d clearly read everything given to her, and seemed to mostly understand things.
She was semi-wobbly on her legs, and seemed somewhat uncoordinated. Not at all what one would expect from someone trained to pilot a 8 story tall walking machine designed for leveling enemy fortresses and suppressing rebellions through sheer intimidation.
When she’d requested tea, Callie had rifled through the fridge, finding a near-expired gallon of sweetened tea from a local chain restaurant they’d gotten by mistake with a take-out order. The pilot downed it over the next twenty minutes.
The roommates started just calling her Tea after that, since she seemed to respond to it. It definitely wasn’t her name, but she seemed to have a positive association with the name, so it stuck. She ate ravenously, and seemed mostly unconcerned with her station. They’d caught her staring wistfully at the felled titan in the distance a few times. She never made any attempt to leave, so the pair resumed their normal lives, albeit a little modified given the active combat zone just north of them.
The Armorers had the resources to help the town stay comfortable during the occupation, and seemed to be in a good position for this recent push. Callie and Mack had never been too picky about their government, as long as they had access to food and water and modern medicine, and of course, the internet, they were happy. Their small town had a few others who they’d considered friends, but since the conflict had sparked, they’d mostly holed up, and communicated via the internet. It wasn’t the first time one of their online friend group had been caught up in a conflict like this. Some lived in much worse areas, some lived in areas freed by Armorers or other similar groups. Many still lived under the thumb of one of a few different cities. Their friends offered as much support as they could, given the circumstance.
They hadn’t mentioned the mute Inner Defense titan pilot sleeping at the foot of their bed to their friends. It seemed like a bad idea, given that she was likely supposed to have reported back to the ID after ejecting. They’d taken her helmet inside with them, but it seemingly wouldn’t power on. It may have not had a battery, and relied on the cockpit to power it, via the large port in the back of it, near the base of the skull. They’d decided to leave it on the kitchen counter and hope nothing came of it.
Tea had been resistant to any clothing at all the first few days, but eventually was coaxed into loose fitting boxer shorts and a tank top. Nothing that fit right, or really covered her, but it was enough that Callie and Mack felt more comfortable than her being buck-naked. She also needed significant help with self-care. Callie handled this.
Mack suggested she’d been ‘well managed’ at the ID, given her seemingly suppressed mental state. It would make sense, with everything they’d heard in rumors about how the ID trained their specialists. Some of them were never given names, and were broken enough that they’d do whatever they were told, so long as a reward was given after.
It seemed like those rumors were true, and Tea’s reward was her namesake. Sweetened tea, from a chain restaurant. If they hadn’t made sure she was eating something else, she’d likely drink nothing but that tea. She needed proper nutrition, it seemed like. Food was agreeing with her, at the very least.
It wasn’t clear what, if much was going through her head. Callie and Mack had no idea what the control mechanisms were for the Titans, but it clearly was more than simple sticks and switches. Something deeper may have been involved, which, upon ejecting, improperly disconnected, leaving the pilot in this fractured mental state. Likely the ID knew this, and had protocols in place to rehabilitate pilots who’d needed to eject.
The apartment wasn’t exactly up to that theorized protocol, but they did their best.
They settled into a rhythm of sorts.
Each morning, Callie would roll out of the bottom bunk (bunk beds saved space in the apartment) and step over Tea, who’d made a nest in the space between the foot of the bed and the wall. She’d make a breakfast of sorts, and listen for Mack to jump out of bed at the smell of cooking, trip over Tea, who’d shoot up, confused, and sprint to the bathroom. She seemed to have trouble holding it, but at least was ‘potty-trained’. Mack would sleepily wander into the kitchen, sit at the table, scrolling through her feeds while eating breakfast, Tea would join them, and the trio would watch the news from overnight. Every few days Callie would run out to gather food from the grocer, who knew them by name from before the conflict.
Lunch would be something of a free for all. Mack cooked snacks, but when normal food supplies ran out, she’d begun experimenting with the dehydrated food. Some of the things she made were pretty good, if a little off texturally.
Evenings would be spent at individual desks, with Tea sitting nearby one of them, reading from a personal airscreen. Mack had an old offline e-reader, loaded up with old romance novels and comics., that she’d lent Tea. She’d taken a liking to full color, long format serialized comics, so every couple days, Mack had to load more chapters on the reader. Some days they played online games together, sometimes they watched shows. It was quaint.
Nothing seemed to phase Tea. It was kind of like having a dog? But a dog who could read, and maybe write, and occasionally speak. Her vocalizations were somewhat feral sounding, but sweet all the same.
She would express displeasure if something bothered her, and happiness when something brought her joy, so she seemed to have the normal gamut of human emotions. She mostly stuck to the floor, preferring to sit cross legged than up in a chair or even on the couch.
She really was like a dog.
After five days, a squad of Armorers knocked on their door in the morning. Mack opened it in nightclothes, looked the men up and down, and closed the door in their faces.
“It’s for you.” She called, plodding back into the kitchen.
“Who?” Calie asked, still wearing an apron and spreading breakfast across two plates and a bowl (they’d determined it was easier on everyone to give Tea a bowl. She wasn’t the cleanest eater. Forks seemed to evade her, so spoons were her utensil of choice.)
“Some Armorers or some shit. Iunno, go ask ‘em yourself.” Mack took her plate and sat down at the coffee table beside Tea, sliding her bowl to her.
Callie’s blood ran cold. She’d been quietly fearing this moment for a week now. There was a crashed, empty ejection pod from an Orcinus-class titan in the front yard of their apartment. Of course the Armorers would come asking what happened to the pilot.
She went to the door, and opened it, using her body to block the view into the apartment, where Mack and Tea were sitting watching the news.
“Morning Sirs, sorry for my roommate, what can I do for you?” She said, in as chipper a tone as she could manage. The man in front looked at her, bemused but seemingly deciding she was no threat.
“That crashed pod in the yard there. Did you see anyone get out of it after it landed?” He asked, gesturing to the pod behind him, where a few other men, armored like him, were standing and observing.
‘Well no, I didn’t see anyone get out of the pod.’ Callie thought to herself. She wouldn’t be lying.
“Nope.” She answered, after a beat. “After we heard that thing,” at this, she looked at the fallen titan pointedly, “crashed, we hunkered down pretty hard. When morning came, we looked out the window and it was open, like that. Haven’t seen anyone mess with it either. I think we’re all just trying to keep our heads down, y’know?” She overexplained, hoping to seem like just a sweet local doing their best through a tough time. Technically, that’s what she was doing. She just also happened to be harboring an enemy combatant. Continent or not, Tea was a threat to them.
The man’s face softened at her statement.
“Yeah, we aren’t the biggest fans of occupying areas like this, we’re usually more on the liberation front but because the ID got involved, things have been a bit more hectic. You and whomever eating okay? We’ve been trying to make sure enough supplies get sent for the entire town.”
She smiled warmly at that.
“We’ve been making do.” She answered, simply. She offered no information she didn’t need to disclose.
“That’s good, we’ll do our best to keep things safe here while this is all going on. Well,” he said, stretching his shoulders a bit and looking around, “if you see anything suspicious about that pod, let us know. There wasn't anybody in there, but who ever was in there left their entire SERE kit in there, weapon and all. Must not have been all that okay to have forgotten to take something like that with ‘em.”
Callie made a face at that. She hadn’t noticed the weapon or kit when lifting Tea out of the seat, but it’s likely it was stowed for piloting and ejection, only accessible after landing. It was probably for the better they left the kit there, even if it was an accident.
“That’s strange, maybe they were hurt? But yes, will do, thanks for worrying about us alongside the cause.” She said, looking out at the pod. He nodded at her, and turned to the other men, shaking his head as if to say ‘no luck’.
She closed the door and wandered back to the kitchen. After grabbing her plate, she flopped down beside Mack and Tea, and sighed deeply. They didn’t have any neighbors who were still in town as far as she knew, so no one else would be around to tell the Armorers they’d taken in a Titan pilot.
After a pause, Mack leaned over and asked, “All good?”
“Yeah, I think so. I don’t know if anyone else will come looking for her though. Not like she’s got any identifying features to them.” Callie said, forking some bacon.
“Let’s hope. You see they got up to the dam?” Mack gestured at the screen they watched the news on. It showed a bird’s eye view of the local hydroelectric dam, about 8 miles north of them. There appeared to be fighting. Hopefully it didn’t mess up their electricity.
Tea was listening to the reporter idly, but snapped to attention when a picture of a severe looking blond woman came up, as the reporter explained, “The ID’s head of Titan Operations, Ms. Vellanueva, has assured the public that the dam will not be damaged significantly if a titan is deployed to this front.”
Tea slowly moved closer to the screen, getting almost nose to glass with the picture. Her entire body language had changed at the sight.