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sunder-the-gold · 8 months

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The Mostima, Lemuen, Exusiai plotline

I thought I was done trying to make sense of what kind of story Hypergryph is trying to tell with these three, and then I remembered that Exusiai now had a second Operator Record I hadn't read yet.

Since that OpRec makes it clear that Hypergryph hasn't given up on this plotline, I'm going to take another crack at it.

Genesis

According to Exusiai's first Operator Record, Lemuen was not merely unconscious when Mostima brought her back to Laterano, she was bloodied, suffering "some pretty severe injuries" and "things did look pretty dicey back then". Unless she sustained these injuries while Mostima and Fiammetta transported her out of Kazdel, then Andoain did all of that to her even if he didn't point his gun directly at her.

Exusiai says, "I clearly remember being scared into a cold sweat. Just thinking about it now makes my hands shake. Not even kidding. At the time, I hadn't sorted things through in my head, and I nearly jumped into a fight with the one who had brought my sister back."

Mostima.

The one whom Exusiai considered her other older sister. The one who was now fallen, with no halo-empathy to convey her feelings, which meant she had turned her gun on another sankta. Possibly (if Mostima didn't keep her new features concealed from her honorary little sister) the one whom now inexplicably had the horns and tail of a hated, terrifying sarkaz within the safety of the holy city.

No one outright says it, but it's natural to suppose that Exusiai thought Mostima was the one who betrayed and hurt her sister. While they didn't actually come to blows, Exusiai might have made some pretty hurtful accusations.

We don't know when this confrontation happened; whether Mostima had already been debriefed about her mission, or if the pope had already passed judgment about what Mostima was to do from then on, or if these things only happened afterwards. So we don't know how the confrontation with Exusiai might have influenced Mostima's choices. Hopefully we can learn more if Mostima gets her own second Operator Record, or if Laterano gets another event.

Exodus

What we do know is that, far from declaring Mostima to be an outlaw and exile, the pope decided to make Mostima a "legata", serving as one of his personal messengers to the rulers of other nations. At one point Fiammetta calls her a "nuncio", and Fiammetta's archives also repeatedly call Mostima a nuncio, which suggests Mostima is an ambassador indefinitely assigned to a specific location.

The pope possibly assigned Mostima to Lungmen (and possibly all of Yan by extension), given how she met with Wei Yenwu in his office towards the end of END8-1, at the end of Episode 8: "Roaring Flare", to deliver a message from the pope. Though she claimed to be doing so in an unofficial capacity, and conveyed an innocuous phrase as code.

Fiammetta volunteered to serve Laterano as Mostima's overseer, fearing and hoping that Andoain would make another attempt to take the Lock and Key staves for himself, so that she could kill him. Her archive files suggest that her official presence also serves to lend the appearance of credibility and trustworthiness to Mostima, who clearly isn't a normal sankta anymore. In various senses, Fiammetta is trying to protect Mostima.

Despite this, Fiammetta herself doesn't have the full details of what happened regarding Andoain, the staves, and Mostima's sarkaz traits. She claims it's none of her business.

Together, the two of them traveled many places, but particularly Lungmen. There, Mostima met with the Emperor and Yith.

It's possible that the pope specifically sent Mostima to meet with the Emperor and Yith. In her Operator Record "Atop the Skyscrapers", Mostima says to Yith, "I joined Penguin Logistics because of you and Emperor, but we haven't had any serious talks since then."

Yith is familiar with the Lock and Key staves, and is not only capable of performing maintenance on them, he also seems to know the person contained with the Lock. Mostima would even, in the future, trust Yith to take the Lock staff from her for a time at least twice.

Somehow, Fiammetta does not yet meet Yith and doesn't know he exists. At most she knows that the Emperor is not an ordinary liberi.

Mostima doesn't interact much with the other employees of Penguin Logistics. In "CB-4 Before", Croissant says, "Tell ya the truth, I barely seen heads or tails of her since they hired me." Texas says, "She's a special kind of Messenger. Contractually, she works for the boss, but more often Laterano has her--" Sora also talks about how she's watched Mostima cast Arts, though Hypergryph seems to forget this later.

Mostima gains a reputation. In "CB-3 Before", Bison mentions that he heard her name from his father, and rumors of a sankta with black horns.

For some reason, those rumors never mention Mostima's redheaded, angry, explosive shadow. Even Mostima's first file record claims that she "always acts alone".

Back at Laterano

Mostima left without saying goodbye to Exusiai, who would have at least learned that Mostima hadn't hurt Lemuen.

Five years later, Lemuen woke up from her coma. We don't know if her superiors debriefed her before Exusiai got the chance to ask her any questions, but Lemuen refused to tell Exusiai what had happened.

In Exusiai's second Operator Record, Lemuen writes in her letter that at least part of the reason for her silence was hoping that "that person would never reappear", and "that this secret would never come to light". Not that she hinted at these reasons to Exusiai at the time.

After this, Exusiai decided to leave Laterano and travel to Lungmen to find Mostima after she graduated from school and became a legal adult. She made no secret of this plan, given how her school rolled out a massive banner wishing her well in Lungmen. Even Mostima heard about that.

Penguin Logistics

However, by the time Exusiai arrived in Lungmen, Mostima was gone. Which wasn't anything new or surprising to Penguin Logistics, especially because they know she still works for Laterano. According to Exusiai's first Operator Record, Exusiai hadn't seen Mostima at all until she turned up in [Code of Brawl] and she was starting to wonder if she'd been tricked.

[Code of Brawl] happened at the end of October 1097. [Guiding Ahead] happens roughly two years later, in March 1099. As of [Guiding Ahead], Lemuen had been awake for three years. Exusiai didn't leave Laterano until Lemuen awoke. Therefore, as of [Code of Brawl], Exusiai should only have been in Lungmen and working for Penguin Logistics for roughly one year.

So, when Mostima asks Texas, Croissant, and Sora "it's been a long time, hasn't it?", and they wonder how long it's been since they've seen her, Exusiai's answer of "roughly four years and three months" doesn't apply to her at all. Exusiai found out roughly the last time they saw her in Lungmen and counted up from that.

So by the time Exusiai arrived in Lungmen from Laterano, Penguin Logistics hadn't seen Mostima for three years and three months. (Which also means that Texas, Sora, and Croissaint had been working for Penguin Logistics for at least that long before Exusiai arrived.) One wonders if Exusiai knew precisely how long Mostima had been gone before she agreed to join the company, or if she felt that hopeless about being able to find Mostima any other way.

The Emperor got in touch with Mostima and told her that Exusiai had joined, and according to Mostima's Operator Record, she was shocked. She told Fiammetta, "To tell the truth, I never thought she'd come running here from Laterano."

And after learning Exusiai was waiting for her, Mostima deliberately avoided her for at least a whole year. When Mostima says that one of the reasons she came back at that time was for Sauin, Exusiai references "all those Sauins" not knowing where Mostima was. Unless Laterano practices Sauin (and why not? Mostima says Lungmen's version reminds her of Laterano), there's either a mistranslation or Hypergryph fudged the timeline.

And it's not as if Mostima avoided Lungmen entirely for that whole year. After the Chernobog Incident ended and Swire takes Ch'en's old job, Mostima appears in Wei Yenwu's office. The fighting with Reunion should be long over, and yet she is sporting a fresh wound. Mostima dismisses it as a little scratch, but Swire exclaims "she's really hurt!" Hoshiguma may not be aware of Mostima by reputation, as she doesn't know if she's seeing a blue-haired sankta or a sarkaz.

Also, rather than actively avoiding Lungmen, Mostima might have simply not had any other reason to visit Exusiai. She didn't need to accept Eurill's contract to watch after Bison, and she suggests that she had fully intended to attend Bison's welcoming party with the girls if not for the mafia throwing a wrench in their plans. Mostima also isn't shy about meeting Exusiai face-to-face.

Secrets

Mostima warns Exusiai that answering her questions could put her on "a long and treacherous path, with your precious guns confiscated, the wicked watching you, hounding you to the mouth of hell", but Exusiai isn't deterred.

Mostima pretends to accept Exusiai's answer, but it's not really Mostima's decision to make, so she skips out of town without revealing anything.

In Mostima's Operator Record, Fiammetta is anxious about whether Mostima is really planning to tell Exusiai the truth, but Mostima isn't willing to cross the Lateran government on that score.

Mostima supposes that's why she's kept her distance from Exusiai even after she followed after. "See, I can't tell her the thing she wants to know the most, so what's the point of me showing up in her life? Give her little hints here and there, pique her interest, and drag her into the whole mess?"

Despite what some fans might have told you, Mostima isn't avoiding Exusiai out of malice or negligence, nor does she show up in Exusiai's life to taunt or tease her for giggles. (Texas thought so, but changed her mind before following through on her intent to murder Mostima to protect her friend.)

Mostima stays away from Exusiai as much as possible in the hopes that her honorary little sister will just give up, but Mostima also shadows her from time to time to make sure she's okay.

And when Lemuen offers Exusiai an avenue to learn the truth, Mostima is noticeably reluctant to deliver that message.

What's the big secret?!

Beats the hell out of me.

Lemuen kept Andoain and his crime a secret from Exusiai, but that seems more personal than anything else. Like maybe she didn't want her little sister hunting him down for revenge.

The secret isn't the staves; the Emperor casually asks Mostima to let "the old fella" in the Lock out to put on a show, and no one bats an eye. Like Mostima's horns and tail, it's something that everyone can know about because no one will just come right out and ask "What's the deal?"

I find it hard to believe that the secret even has something to do with an ancestral connection between sankta and sarkaz, given how willing the pope was to let Cecelia live, register as a legal citizen, and then leave the city to stay at a pharmaceutical company (started by the last sarkaz queen!) that would be well-equipped to test her DNA.

You could call this bad writing, but you can't dismiss this as a retconned mistake anymore. Hypergryph didn't change their minds about Exusiai and Mostima's backstory; they're still going through with the idea that there's still some big state secret that Exusiai isn't allowed to know that a small crowd of people doesn't already know.

#arknights #lemuen #mostima #exusiai #penguin logistics #laterano

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