The stars are my friends [America] [Flashback]

When her papa starts to tease her a bit, Anna can't help but giggle. Of course, when he starts to tickle her with his fingers, she can't help but giggle even more. But that's not enough to distract her from something that captures her attention even more than being tickled.

Given who her parents are, it should be no shock to anyone that Anna is an extremely competitive person. But not too competitive - she's very quick to lose her interest in anything if it starts to get hostile. But as long as it's friendly competition, she's completely on board. Which is why the moment that her papa turns the simple task of getting to the cupola into a race, she immediately wants to abandon the idea of being on his 'team' and instead enter the race herself. Not that she doubts that her papa is likely to win - she'd guess that her fathers are actually quite evenly matched, and her papa did get a little head start, but she knows that she's even more likely to guarantee victory if she participates herself. Which is why she purposely uses the fact that her papa is tickling her to her advantage to squirm out of his grasp. The moment that he doesn't have both hands firmly holding onto her, she gently pushes away from him - being careful to make sure that her movements don't throw him too far off and spoil his chances in the race, though because every action causes and equal and opposite reaction she can't avoid that completely. What she's looking to do is to touch the wall of the space station - anywhere will do.

One of the first things an astronaut or cosmonaut learns about microgravity is to be careful about pushing off from a wall. And how hard you push doesn't matter nearly as much as how fast you push - the moment that you're no longer touching the wall of the station, for better or worse you cannot change your speed or trajectory until you touch it again. New astronauts therefore learn quickly to be a bit gingerly about it, not going too far from where they can get a good grip - kind of like an ice skater who holds onto the wall of an ice rink until they get more used to it. Even those with more experience tend to be conservative with their movements, just in case they misjudge their movements.

But unlike any of those who may have spent up to a year or two of their lives in space, Anna's been in space for many years - she was born in space - and she only uses caution when she's outside of the protection of the station where the slightest mistake could cause her to fly off well out of reach of anything to hang onto. In the station where the worst possible outcome is that she might knock herself into the wall hard enough to get a good bump, though? She's a perfect storm of skill and sheer recklessness. The second that she has a wall to touch, she uses it to quickly aim herself and take off ahead as fast as she can - which is pretty fast, especially since she doesn't touch the wall except when she needs to change her trajectory. Quite a bit faster than she usually goes - normally she curbs her speed a bit just to make it less likely that she'll accidently plow into someone, but this is a race so she's less concerned about that. Nope, the important thing is beating both of her fathers to the cupola.

Floating in the microgravity of low Earth orbit is not very taxing, even if you're going really fast, so her giggling continues uninterrupted by any need to breathe harder. And she can't help but giggle - she's got both of her fathers with her and they're headed to her favorite place - that's even more important than getting there first. She's so happy that she can hardly contain herself - if she was a child of the Earth she'd be skipping along right now. But instead she's a child of space so she does a completely unnecessary barrel-roll instead.