"Nice to meet you, Bella!" he says brightly, ignoring the question.

"If you won't tell me what to call you it can't be all that nice, can it," she says.

"Don't feel bad," he says amicably, "I'm like that with everybody."

"Why?" She clearly expects there to be an answer and for him to know it. She still expects people to be able to read their own minds, even if they can't read anyone else's.

"Because I hate my name and I don't have a better one."

"Then you should make something up. Half the kids in my launch already have nicknames even if you don't count 'Bella'. And we only got here three weeks ago."

"I guess it's harder if you hate your name that much."

"Yep," he agrees. "You can call me whatever you want, anyway, I figure out all right when people are talking to me."

"Dunno." She peers at his avatar as its bones melt and it collapses into a puddle of flesh. "Suicide Watch, maybe, but that's just as long as the name I'm shortening and not very namey."

"It's funny, though," he says cheerfully. "It'll do for now."

"Okay." Bella's done standing on that foot. She stands on the other, then decides that's boring and clings like a koala to an unused pole-shaped game console nearby instead, with one arm and one leg. She doesn't like to be still for too long, not when she can move so perfectly. "How come you don't like your name?"

"Because my dad gave it to me," he explains, as though that's all that needs to be said about it and the rest is obvious from there.

"And I hate him," he corrects, without strong emotion. It's just a fact about the world.

"Oh. Well, at least you don't get leave to go planetside for another five or six years at the soonest?"

"Yep!" he says brightly. "My favourite thing about Battle School is the miles of vacuum between me and home."

"I like being busy," says Bella. "I like my parents but I'm always away from one of them anyway, so two isn't so much different."

"What do you like about them?" he asks.

"They're nice. They love me. They got me my exo," says Bella, letting go of her perch and landing on one toe to twirl. "They're just not all that interesting."

"Trade you," he offers, and then snorts. "No way, I like you too much to stick you with mine."

"What do they do?" she asks. The game console next to him - not the fantasy game, some kind of infinite minefield puzzle that won't interfere with her ability to hold a conversation, opens up; she sits and starts skimming her coppered hands over the controls.

"What's with the hands?" he asks instead of answering.

"The copper stuff? That's part of my exoskeleton," she says. "I'm sort of a cripple. This gives me superpowers instead. It's not safe for most people but it is for me 'cause telepaths can't touch my brain and take over the exo like they did with that one guy that one time that made it hard for me to get one."

"Oh," he says. "Cool!"