28th Candid Photo
[When Hachibe went out to check the mail this morning, he was expecting the usual junk Mayfield shoved into peoples' mailboxes. Bills that no one ever had to pay, letters from the school about his progress in math class... stuff like that. But the red envelope with his name on it, sealed with a heart-shaped sticker, was definitely new. It seemed a little suspicious at first, but he opened it all the same. After all, maybe Shirley had written him a love note and put it in there for Valentine's Day! However, it was empty inside except for a flood of what somehow had to be memories. Memories of a past life, and a past love.
It was the 1940s, and an enterprising apprentice teenage reporter from the Fuso Empire named Hachibe Maeda had struck out on his own to cover the war between the Strike Witches and the Neuroi. He barely had any money to his name, but he got by doing odd jobs as he followed the battles all over the world with little more than a backpack slung across his shoulder and his trusty camera at his side. Being a famous reporter was his dream, and never being one to take the slow or easy way to his dreams, he placed himself in danger time and again trying to get the best shots of these beautiful ladies gliding through the air to defend Earth's skies against the alien threat.
And one day, while hitchhiking his way across Liberion, he met a girl that would change his life forever. Her name was Charlotte Yeager - Shirley to her comrades. She was a member of an elite crew called the 501st Joint Fighter Wing - a young, beautiful, and enterprising flight leiutenant with the most beautiful blue eyes Hachibe had ever seen. He knew as soon as he'd developed his first picture of her that this was the girl of his dreams. Shoving his aspirations of personal glory aside, he vowed in his heart that he would get this girl to notice him, and that the two of them would somehow, some way, end up together.
And so he kept running straight into the middle of every battle he could find, hoping to catch another shot of this girl in action, or to find out where her base was so he could meet her in person. Eventually, he strayed too closely to the battlefield and was almost killed himself, but that's when he got his miracle - when he opened his eyes, he was soaring through the air in the arms of his bunny-eared angel. She scolded him for wandering into a warzone, but Hachibe was too lovestruck to care and simply blurted out his feelings right then and there. It went better than he could have hoped, as instead of just dropping him like a hot potato, Shirley actually blushed. Finally, he'd been able to meet her, and his heart soared as she carried him to safety.
...Of course, she still reamed Hachibe out for putting himself into such a perilous situation and jeopardizing combat operations, but now he had a reliable way into her heart. It took two more similar stunts and subsequent rescues before she finally agreed to go on a date with him in exchange for a promise to stop recklessly running into danger. Over the next few months, the two kindled a whirlwind romance under the radar of the military. After all, it was wartime, and Shirley's superiors had some pretty strict rules about having a boyfriend on the side while there was still fighting to be done.
The scenes flashed through Hachibe's memory almost too quickly to piece together. Clandestine meetings during Shirley's rare opportunities to get away from the base. Photographs that the two of them kept hidden away as a reminder of their secret romance. The inevitable slip-up where Shirley's superior officer found out and tried to separate the two for good. A scene sometime later with a desperate Hachibe running toward her again on the front lines. He couldn't quite remember how it all ended for the two of them, as he snapped out of the flashback in the middle of a passionate kiss with his dream girl, heart nearly beating out of his chest.
Once he'd calmed down a little and sorted things out, he headed for the phones.]
[Filtered to Charlotte Yeager]
Uh... Shirley? Did you remember anything today? About... us?
It was the 1940s, and an enterprising apprentice teenage reporter from the Fuso Empire named Hachibe Maeda had struck out on his own to cover the war between the Strike Witches and the Neuroi. He barely had any money to his name, but he got by doing odd jobs as he followed the battles all over the world with little more than a backpack slung across his shoulder and his trusty camera at his side. Being a famous reporter was his dream, and never being one to take the slow or easy way to his dreams, he placed himself in danger time and again trying to get the best shots of these beautiful ladies gliding through the air to defend Earth's skies against the alien threat.
And one day, while hitchhiking his way across Liberion, he met a girl that would change his life forever. Her name was Charlotte Yeager - Shirley to her comrades. She was a member of an elite crew called the 501st Joint Fighter Wing - a young, beautiful, and enterprising flight leiutenant with the most beautiful blue eyes Hachibe had ever seen. He knew as soon as he'd developed his first picture of her that this was the girl of his dreams. Shoving his aspirations of personal glory aside, he vowed in his heart that he would get this girl to notice him, and that the two of them would somehow, some way, end up together.
And so he kept running straight into the middle of every battle he could find, hoping to catch another shot of this girl in action, or to find out where her base was so he could meet her in person. Eventually, he strayed too closely to the battlefield and was almost killed himself, but that's when he got his miracle - when he opened his eyes, he was soaring through the air in the arms of his bunny-eared angel. She scolded him for wandering into a warzone, but Hachibe was too lovestruck to care and simply blurted out his feelings right then and there. It went better than he could have hoped, as instead of just dropping him like a hot potato, Shirley actually blushed. Finally, he'd been able to meet her, and his heart soared as she carried him to safety.
...Of course, she still reamed Hachibe out for putting himself into such a perilous situation and jeopardizing combat operations, but now he had a reliable way into her heart. It took two more similar stunts and subsequent rescues before she finally agreed to go on a date with him in exchange for a promise to stop recklessly running into danger. Over the next few months, the two kindled a whirlwind romance under the radar of the military. After all, it was wartime, and Shirley's superiors had some pretty strict rules about having a boyfriend on the side while there was still fighting to be done.
The scenes flashed through Hachibe's memory almost too quickly to piece together. Clandestine meetings during Shirley's rare opportunities to get away from the base. Photographs that the two of them kept hidden away as a reminder of their secret romance. The inevitable slip-up where Shirley's superior officer found out and tried to separate the two for good. A scene sometime later with a desperate Hachibe running toward her again on the front lines. He couldn't quite remember how it all ended for the two of them, as he snapped out of the flashback in the middle of a passionate kiss with his dream girl, heart nearly beating out of his chest.
Once he'd calmed down a little and sorted things out, he headed for the phones.]
[Filtered to Charlotte Yeager]
Uh... Shirley? Did you remember anything today? About... us?