2022-04-21: "Take What I'm Offering": A Guide To Living Well In The REA
- Log: "Take What I'm Offering": A Guide To Living Well In The REA
- Cast: Yuliana Dispersal, Athrusa Hsieh
- Where: Nouvelle Tokyo
- Date: 2022-04-21
- Summary: Yuliana is sent on a mission to retrieve Athrusa. Unfortunately, despite their shared past, she disperses.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
The imaging room of Medical is comfortable enough; sterile white, but the chairs are plastic-padded, and the great dome has a headrest to lie against. Yuliana taps her pen to the top of her clipboard, as she fills out a chart of symptoms, the sorts of things they can't just tell with their magic machines. How restless she's been, how sad she's felt, whether she's been particularly anxious lately. Boring stuff.
"Say," she starts, cheerfully, "whatever happened to Doctor..."
"Sometimes people find alternative employment," the man in the white coat cuts her off. "There is fantastic opportunity in our country."
Yuliana sighs, tossing the pen back to him. He fumbles it; it clatters to the floor. It's white and uniform. Easy to clean. "Yes, yes," she dismisses the idea, as she wags the clipboard at him. "For the glory of the Republic, and all that. Hmm, not to say it's a joke ridiculous, but don't you think these things stand on their own merits? Finished your stupid survey, by the way. What precisely is the point of tracking my emotions, anyhow?"
He leans down to collect the pen, and takes the clipboard, just the same. "A preoccupation with human suffering," he supposes. He didn't start this particular thread of monitoring. "I'd prefer you to be comfortable, Captain Dispersal, and it seems our current medication regime is losing efficacy."
"Oh? Are you sure you're not afraid of losing track of me? Silly man, you know I love you all best!" It's close enough to the truth; she's invested in the storyline.
"I'm glad to hear that," he replies, without sounding terribly invested, himself. "Now -- please lie down, Captain."
The readings are unusual, but they always are. The doctor wants to run some more tests, which of course means going to a bed, and -- well, who knows? A good injection or two, and she's out like a light.
-^-
Not every visit is so pleasant. Don't think too long on that time she tossed herself against the wrist-straps, all against the bed, to demand, blood-fury and bloodied lip: "Where did you go?! WHERE DID YOU GO?!" ... to the doctor who only moved to stand behind her, at the head of the bed.
Or the time they didn't catch the dip in time, the time she's all but draped on a woman in a white coat, all clutched at the shoulders, all sobbing. "Can't you hear me? Can't you hear me?" Again, and again, and again, no matter the reassurance she hears.
Or, hands all clutched to her own chest, all cast in grim horror, that wide-eyed confession: "You don't understand observe the concordance fails to, falls to, look at what you're leaping over! Blindered and bluster the gap, the between, they pierce it open! But what is the pause of the page turning?! Observed accounted -- you idiots! I'm not the one you should be afraid of! Ugh -- get that away from me!"
There's a good reason why Yuliana takes the medications she has. It's not entirely a matter of control. There are people who saw her futile suffering; not everyone wanted to prolong it.
-^-
Her spine hurts like a broken heart when she wakes up, and the dreams aren't even worth mentioning, but that's just a normal day at Medical. Yuliana's pretty used to sauntering out of the clinic and straight into work.
Like so: she barges right into Major Vinh Pham's office as bright as you please, one hand to her chest, the other all splayed out. "I heard your call, and lo, I appear..!"
The Major clears his throat. Yuliana snaps to attention, with a salute. "Sir."
"We've had reports on Doctor Baihe's location, Captain Dispersal," Pham reports, wearily. "Take your team and apprehend her."
Yuliana snaps her fingers. "RIGHT! That's the one I was thinking of! Man, she's been gone forever!" Her commanding officer pointedly does not ask, as she grabs the file on his desk and flicks through it. "... 'Athrusa'? Like, for real?"
"For real," Major Pham confirms, unmoved.
"Wow, she's messed up good." Yuliana's head cocks to the side, with a sceptical expression, as she jabs at a passage on the file with a finger. The motion reveals the edge of a generous war-scar, handily hidden by the way her bangs drape over one side of her face. "She get lost in the med room or something?"
"That information is on a need-to-know basis," Major Pham sighs. "But the Doctor -- Athrusa, whatever she's calling herself now -- has eluded us for some time. Do bring her back, Captain."
"Yes, sir!" Yuliana chirps, chipper, snapping a one-handed salute before she ambles out of the room.
-^-
"I'll be taking point on this one."
"Captain..?"
"Letda, Kadet, do your thing and make this happen. Lettu, I'll want you keeping a bead on the situation." Yuliana issues commands to her second lieutenant, cadet, and first lieutenant; they're all used to the linguistic shift, by now.
"Captain," Lieutenant Yuan points out, "the Major wants her alive. Are you sure..?"
"It might be unnecessary," Yuliana tells her sniper, with a big smile. "On the other hand, you don't get to slip out of the net for this long without having something up your sleeve. Don't shoot without a signal, and it's not on your head!"
Anyway, that's the kind of banter you can expect from the Nega Force.
-^-
Mysteriously, there's a BIG SALE at the sundae store!
(It's not a mystery. Lieutenant Chaudhri just went through the back-end and arranged a few things on the corporate network. Thanks to Officer Cadet Wattana smoothing things over, the store wasn't too mad about the schedule changing.)
The sundae store, of course, is precisely what it sounds like: a store devoted entirely to delicious treats. And it just so happens that this special is tied into a promotion for the newest hot magical girl show: Magical Princess Natural Lychee! All the creamy treats are themed around Natural Lychee and her friends -- and foes, at that.
There's a dark-skinned woman in a colourful scarf sipping a Rambutan Shivershake. (That character disappeared for the most recent season, but she's still a fan favourite.) She's wearing sunglasses and a delightful patterned sunhat over her dark suit, so it's difficult to place just who she is, aside from being inappropriately dressed for winter.
Mysteriously, no one else is sitting at her table, despite the rest of the restaurant being packed. For all the excitement in Nouvelle Tokyo, here in the other end of the city, there isn't any debris to deal with in the aftermath.
(Yes, yes, there was activity elsewhere in the city earlier. Nega Force would have helped with whatever was going on, but they really needed to stop off for hotdogs on the way to this mission. It was of vital tactical importance.)
<Pose Tracker> Athrusa Hsieh has posed.
Hsieh Baihe had disappeared from the Renascence Orchid project for more than a year now. She had excursions before -- but somewhere in the vicinity of more than a year ago, she was just not... there any longer. Her vacancy in the staff role was papered over ever-so-swiftly, and people asking questions were very -gently- persuaded to consider other topics -or else-.
She doesn't remember.
All she remembered was the haze of an impeccably sterile, white room; the way she pushed out and shoved a guard, still in chains. She ran in a daze... then everything was faint, vague again.
Then she was in front of a Gundam. She climbed into the cockpit. It didn't respond to her. It didn't matter. She could become a camera. She could become a traffic light. She could become the Gundam.
And then she left, through the power of incredible violence.
~~
Baihe -- Athrusa -- is of just slightly above average height for a woman from Taiwan; she has ashen-white hair, pale skin, and an unearthly and beautiful visage that borders on the eerie, a kind of mildly uncanny valley quality that makes her sit in the gap between a doll and a human being.
She is also still wearing her doctor's coat, with a white suit underneath; it's like she doesn't understand that one can wear COLOURS and express personality.
She is also standing in line at the sundae store, because she has a brochure that expresses 20% OFF!! BUY ONE GET ONE FREE in bold, exciting letters.
"The business strategem of offering both a twenty percent discount and a one-for-two combined attracts customers... so this is something that attracts potential buyers," Athrusa muses to herself, in that emotionless tone of hers.
She pauses, as she looks towards the magical girl show -- Magical Princess Natural Lychee. She hasn't seen the show yet. She somewhat wants to.
She stops and looks towards the dark-skinned woman sipping the Ramubtan Shivershake, then looks up at the menu. "I see... the sundae are themed after the characters, which themselves are themed after fruit. This association draws children to purchase the products..."
Athrusa's at the front of the line. "I will order the Lychee Nutrablast." A pause. "Vitamin shot? Whipped cream? Whey Protein? I do not comprehend. ... yes. Yes. That will be all."
She manages to survive her ordeal at the sundae with only a mild selection of additions. Now for a seat, hmm...
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
"Just fell ass-first on the fun drugs," Yuliana mumbles, into her milkshake, listening to one voice through the din of all the others.
This, apparently, counts as confirming that she has eyes on the target. Yuliana's team is... used to her? Used to her.
She watches Baihe order, out of the corner of her eye; it's only when she starts looking around to try and find a seat, though, that Yuliana appears to notice her. She turns, and waves her over, entirely friendly.
"You can't just choose one topping either, right?" She asks, turning in her chair. "Me too! It's so hard to tell what one works, isn't it? Hey, you can come sit here, if you like!" With those dark glasses, it's hard to tell whether this lady's particularly put off by such an ethereal appearance, but she sounds friendly enough.
(She did sound friendly, many times, during treatment. More of that, and less of breaking down, after she stabilised some more.)
There are free seats, at the table. At the -- very quiet table, because coming in towards it, all the ambient excitement over creamy treats falls away to nothingness. That's... probably fine? Yuliana's smiling and inviting, so it doesn't seem like she thinks anything's wrong.
<Pose Tracker> Athrusa Hsieh has posed.
Athrusa pauses when she looks Yuliana over. Some measure of... recognition...? No, she doesn't know this woman, who has graciously offered a seat to her. But why does she feel some measure of... she doesn't understand what she's feeling. It's a bit dizzying.
Sitting down is an incredible idea.
She nods and sits, looking towards her sundae-concoction. "There is an astonishing amount of options," she admits. "Is it part of the joy of having a sundae? I am not certain."
Well, in a way, she certainly hasn't changed. Good ol' Doctor Hsieh Baihe, the emotionless golem amidst the other characters back at the lab. But... some other things have changed. There's a tinge of curiousity in her eyes that wasn't there before. The way she's here at a sundae joint instead of quietly dismissing it with a 'I do not comprehend'.
She tries a spoonful.
"... there is a remarkable amount of sugar in this ..."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Yuliana was really expecting another reaction. She was ready to chase her as soon as she entered her zone of influence and realised who she was dealing with. She was hoping she'd sit down and they'd get to have an oldschool tense showdown under the sniper lighting.
(There's no visible red dot. Wen Yuan is more experienced than that; she's put it somewhere it won't be noticed.)
She wasn't expecting... another of those thick-as-bricks conversations, as if nothing happened at all.
Yuliana's teeth press down, delicately, against her lower lip. "Yeah," she agrees, sounding a shade distracted. "There are some big names behind sugar, so they put it in everything, these days."
A hand lifts, nails painted choking-blue; with a smooth motion she removes her sunglasses, shaking out her hair, a little. There's that scar, running down her face. It's a miracle it didn't blind her. (Maybe Doctor Baihe had something to do with that, too.)
Yuliana tucks it under her scarf, folding the glasses in against her upper pocket, and looks to her with those green eyes which haven't always been envious.
"You're really..." Married to this anime bit, she almost says, before she catches herself. Her pensive expression is replaced by another grin towards Athrusa, and a loose shrug of her shoulders. "Really new to sundaes, huh? So what made you stop in and try one now?" Light, breezy. No one's bothered.
(There's no information on whether she is, either, beyond the emotions playing on her face. The signals do not return. Not only does she not exist, empathically speaking... no one else does, right now, either.)
<Pose Tracker> Athrusa Hsieh has posed.
Athrusa doesn't catch the slight tension and distraction in Yuliana's voice. Instead, she is distracted by the way this woman feels strangely familiar to her, as if she's known her... most of her life, and yet at the same time feels completely foreign. Like she doesn't really understand whose body she belongs in any longer.
"I am new to sundaes," she answers very seriously, as if she were a kid. "The sign attracted me here, as did the crowd. I do not understand why some things draw such a large crowd of people, so I thought... I would experience it too."
She places a brochure on the table. "As I am experiencing the rest of this city and its wards. So many people have written so many recommendations. I am following these to understand why."
... is that why her itinerary has just been literally following tourist brochures as of late??? Even the dumb ones tourists with a grain of salt wouldn't fall for? Perhaps they can lay a trap down in Destinyland next time...
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Yuliana wishes she hadn't just taken off her sunglasses, because Athrusa putting down those brochures would have been the perfect moment to take them off in disbelief.
(Internal inventory: can I put them back on so I can take them off incredulously? No, they'd never believe that development. This isn't an absurdist story.)
"Wow." Somehow, Yuliana manages to restrain her initial thoughts on the situation. "Sounds like you've got it all planned out. Is there a lot you're trying to understand?"
She reaches up and adjusts her hat, with a little sideways wave of her fingers. This is, of course, code for 'don't interrupt, everything is fine'. Everything isn't fine, but there are some things people just don't volunteer from the other side of an interrogation table.
Something isn't adding up here, and Yuliana is nothing if not interested in plot twists. Doctor Baihe was never a good enough liar to sell amnesia like this, so why doesn't she even seem to know her name? (Like a palindrome or a bigender, this statement works both ways.)
<Pose Tracker> Athrusa Hsieh has posed.
It's somewhere in the details, Athrusa feels, but those thoughts haven't reached the conscious surface of her mind yet. The scar, which has a story... why does it feel like it would be a familiar story if it was told to her? Like she was an observer in another's body. And those green eyes. And yet she misses other details, like the gesture Yuliana subtly makes while adjusting her hat. She's not a very good spy, which is not surprising for Doctor Baihe.
"There is... a lot," Athrusa nods quietly. "I do not understand... very much at all. I came to this sundae stand because I saw a lot of people walk this way, but even after experiencing it, I do not know if I understand what it is that appealed to people in an instinctual way."
A hesitant pause. She glances aside. "Thus, perhaps if I followed these experiences, which someone wanted people to have, perhaps I would gain some understanding."
She's never really piped down around strangers; Doctor Baihe always seemed to treat everyone equally, in the sense that she didn't naturally develop layers of familiarity and friendship and closeness... but she was never cruel and malicious either in the same sense -- because those concepts seem utterly foreign to her.
"I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Athrusa Hsieh," she answers. "I am a travelling surgeon."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
To be frank, it was fine with Yuliana if Baihe never wanted to be her friend. Those sorts of relationships are inevitably trite and superficial, anyway, so she wasn't missing much. But the Doctor was -- honest. Fullthroatedly her character, without getting distracted by throwing in whatever sounded interesting at the time.
Besides, some of those doctors enjoy their jobs way too much. They can try to hide it, but it's obvious, to a careful reader. Not that Yuliana would begrudge anyone for enjoying something distasteful (if you can't have fun with your job, what's the point?), but -- it's not pleasant to deal with, on the table.
Is that why it's not the plot, twisting up her gut, when Doctor Baihe introduces herself as some old anime character? It's almost like she --
One of those painted-nail hands reaches across the table, to grasp Athrusa's wrist, with a soldier's surety. (It's hollow. Warm, and little else.) "If you want to understand, you have to listen," Yuliana insists, a touch of reediness to her voice, intruding on her kind and cheerful curiosity. Her smile falls, teeth resting lightly at her lip, and that visible half of her face draws up in desperation.
"Can't you hear me?"
<Pose Tracker> Athrusa Hsieh has posed.
Yuliana's hand reaches, and grasps her wrist. Athrusa's eyes open just a smidgen further, but soften into that murkiness of no-emotion that she so tends to linger around. The Doctor Baihe was always honest. Once again, it was as if lies were a foreign concept to her.
Perhaps she doesn't enjoy her job, because perhaps she 'is' her job. She often speaks about saving lives. From a lot of other people, it can sound really trite, and very fake; a comfortable cover story to be put on to attract validation and attention.
Doctor Baihe always spoke of 'saving lives' as if it were hunger, or thirst, or something fundamental. Something she can't resist, no matter how she felt about it, in the same way a human being can't stave off their thirst or hunger forever.
A directive.
Yuliana's warmth disappears in part, and that desperation comes through. If she wants to understand... she has to listen.
Can't you hear me?
She comes to a dead stop, for what seems like thirty... forty, fifty seconds, one minute. Her lips purse gently.
"Do... I... know you?"
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Yuliana Dian is not a woman who can be saved. That's why she doesn't share her family name with anyone else, any more, an island unto herself. Whoever named her 'Dispersal' enjoyed their job a little too much, too.
Even so -- even so. Even after the light went out, wouldn't it be nice, if someone could see?
She knows what she's missing. She feels the emptiness where it ought to go, knows the shape of connection from the contours of the void. It is a horrible feeling, behind one-way glass, screaming.
No one could fix her. No one SHOULD fix her, not with the power she can offer her country. But even so, even so --
There are little ways some of them try, sometimes.
The little ways she tried...
"It's me, Doctor Baihe," she says, voice thin. "Yuliana. Yuliana Dispersal. Listen -- listen -- you have to tell me what happened. I can help you, but you have to tell me." She speaks low, pressed and hurried.
She doesn't have to reach people to know what her team must think of breaking protocol like this.
<Pose Tracker> Athrusa Hsieh has posed.
Hsieh Baihe was never a doctor who was let 'in' on the deeper workings of the laboratory. It's not clear whether or not they considered her a risk, or perhaps a liability, or whether they thought it would be in her character to object...
Some lives cannot be saved. Hsieh Baihe understood this, but did she? She knows in the way that she knows she will fail her operation sometimes, that someone will have an adverse reaction she has no way of knoowing.
But some interventions are less clear and direct than surgery, than medicine. Even when she isn't 'in' on the worst of the dealings in the lab, she understands the amount of suffering involved with the patients, the subjects, the experiments...
Athrusa Hsieh is a void. She is so empty, a hollowed-out shell of something playing at being a human being. And yet within that hollowed-out shell, she is a computer, frayed from the outside world in every reasonable sense of the word, with all her connecting cables slashed at the source...
Yet she's still trying to make a connection.
"Bai...he?" Athrusa starts to sound somewhat distressed, all of a sudden. Why does that word sound familiar? A flower. Yuliana makes her name known. Yuliana... Yuliana? The throes of familiarity echo ever so painfully. Every fibre of her being is trying to make connections, but failing. Disconnected. Disconnected. Disconnected.
"I do not... remember. I know very little," Athrusa admits quietly, just as low. "A laboratory. Injections, on a regular schedule. So much medicine. Tests. A guard... I pushed him. I think I hurt him."
She's strangely hung up on that. But she gets past it. She looks to those green eyes.
"Who is... she?" Baihe. The name sounds so familiar, yet so foreign. Like she's an observer, looking into the vacancy of a body that is both hers and isn't hers...
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Disconnection is Yuliana's herald. Even that physical joint -- fingers to wrist -- offers no emotional insight. There's a pulse, in her thumb, as it tightens slightly. It's fast, with no context why.
That might be painful, too. Yuliana is a soldier, after all.
"You --" Yuliana's terse word cuts off abruptly, as she takes a deep breath, and releases. "... you messed up, huh?" She asks, instead, and maybe it sounds like she wasn't answering that last question. With a wavering smile, Yuliana tries an encouraging tone, instead. "But look, you're a surgeon. Guards are replaceable! I don't know what crazy stuff you were up to that made you even more nuts than you were before, but if you come with me, we can sort this out."
It's something she went in for, right? Obviously, if her memory's ruined, she wasn't experimenting on someone else. But Athrusa's the sort of person who would go in for modding herself if she thought it would help her be a better surgeon, right?
Right?
The alternative is...
"Come on, it's got to be better than running around calling yourself a magical girl. Those aren't real! And I mean, neither are any of you, but don't you think it's a little on the nose?" Yuliana laughs, and then laughs a little too long, cracking a shade too high. "Come on, Doc, we can't have you being this self-aware. Don't you know it's rude to get a girl's hopes up?"
<Pose Tracker> Athrusa Hsieh has posed.
Athrusa feels pain. There's no part of her, artificial or not, that was designated to dull pain; no such thing as being able to disconnect pain receptors. But pain is a connection, in a way. A connection that Yuliana is offering, along with...
An offer. An offer for everything to be sorted out.
...
Did she 'mess up'? What did she mess up? Her mission? Was she part of a mission? An infiltration mission into the laboratory? Was that all... always there...? She doesn't remember, of course. Athrusa Hsieh doesn't know. ... did Hsieh Baihe?
"I... cannot," Athrusa answers with difficulty, a moment later. "I am sorry, but I cannot... return, Yuliana."
She grimaces, as Yuliana laughs that it has to be better than pretending to be a magical girl. That's not real! And neither is Athrusa and Baihe... so...
What of her is real?
...
The her whose wrist is feeling pain from Yuliana's grip at the moment...
The her who curiously came to have a sundae today because it was busy, and it was twenty percent off, and she could have two if she bought one...
"I learnt that 'Athrusa' is a silly name... people look at me strangely for it... children giggle... someone said I was an 'otaku'."
She lifts her head up.
"But I... chose that name for myself. I don't remember... choosing anything for myself ever before. And once I did that, it's too late to come back... it's too late to close that door again. And that's why... I can't return."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Yuliana listens, and stops laughing. How dare --
"'I'm sorry'? What's this horseradish?" Acid enters her tone, with a tightening of her grip. "Take my advice, Doc: apologising for something you're not going to do in the first place is just insulting contrived." She says the words in concert, like her thoughts branch in two paths and both of them bleed into the same sentence. She has torn into the space between; it bleeds.
Being fair, it's not like this betrayal really matters, one way or another. It's just a standard amnesia story; those go layers deep. But Yuliana is not someone who has been fair for some time.
And it just feels personal, when it's someone she knew like that. Someone who won't come back to her. Who left her job to Doctor Sun, who she swears is a mad scientist, she just needs to get a shot of him in the full get-up.
"Look," she takes a breath through her teeth, "I get it. You know why I -- ugh, right." It's two realisations in one: she relaxes her iron grip, and blows her cheeks out, too. Amnesia. That old chestnut. "Right, right... I know what it's like to not go back because I chose this too, Doc. You know -- the experiments. Signed the consent forms and the waivers and everything. It's not exactly what anyone wanted, but I literally signed up for it."
She shrugs, leaning back in her seat. "So that's it, then. You chose to leave, and I chose... oh, well. Guess it's the hard way, then."
Yuliana sighs, and straightens up, folding her hands on the table.
"Doctor Baihe, you're surrounded. I have two men in the area, and a sniper on your position. From where I'm sitting, you have two options: you can come with me, or you can come with me in horrific pain." She doesn't so much as blink, as she lists her options. She doesn't so much as raise her voice. "I don't think you want to cause a fuss in public. The psychological injury caused to these kids from seeing you get hurt really doesn't seem like something which suits you."
She takes hostages effortlessly, too. None of those children, safely outside her sphere of influence, realise they've just been involved in a horrific moral quandry.
Yuliana stands, and stretches out her hand, as if they were two friends about to leave to go watch some anime.
"Take what I'm offering you."
... an order from Captain Dispersal.
<Pose Tracker> Athrusa Hsieh has posed.
'Sorry'. It's not a foreign word for her -- she's been equipped with the capability to apologise, after all. A detached, professional apology was probably deemed an essential skill for a surgeon, because not even an Innovade that was tailor-made for such a skill can truly work miracles outside the realms of possibility.
But this apology...
It's not the clinical, detached apology of a professional who did her best. It's a personal one, and...
In ways, that can be worse.
It's difficult and stressful, to not know, she's finding -- she's not immune to stress. To not know in what way she was meaningful to Yuliana before... but there clearly was meaning, for her to chase her down like this, to personally flag her to come back and sort things out. She wasn't a complete nobody to her.
To her surprise, Yuliana relaxes her grip. "If I return... I will truly lose the ability to choose for myself. I cannot... afford to lose that at present."
Her eyes widen, then, when Yuliana lays the situation out before her. Two men in the area, a sniper in her position. And her options -- Yuliana doesn't have to do more than imply to know that the children around them are part of this exercise too.
Focus... and... expand.
Yuliana is a void, and she feels muddier and hazier around her with her mental conscience dulled, as if it was swaddled in wool... but she isn't a Newtype. Her consciousness expands on an electronic level--
And with that, she's now the EFTPOS machine on the sundae till (yes that's how you know the player writing this is Oceanic). A wireless EFTPOS machine at that; she surfs on the Wifi, hops from router to router... there--
A moment later, an extremely loud and irritating Wifi-enabled fire alarm (this is Nouvelle Tokyo they absolutely love that shit) begins to blare out. And two. And three. The whole block's going off at this point! A child begins crying. A public PA service announces: "This is a public safety fire alert. Please evacuate the area in an orderly manner..."
Athrusa spares one look full of conflict to Yuliana, gazes towards those green eyes of hers-- then breaks out into a full sprint as the crowd thickens.
Yuliana Dispersal...
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
She can't afford to lose her ability to choose, huh?
Unfortunately, Yuliana can't just afford to come back empty handed, either.
The void which is her has no comprehension of what Athrusa is doing -- that she isn't, strictly speaking, still in front of her. If she realised, she might have grabbed her and run before she could get back. Instead: alarms.
"Ahhh, shit," Yuliana hisses out, gaze snapping to the alarms. She looks back to Athrusa, in the bare edge of that moment -- more rueful than ruthless, in that eyeblink before the crowd provides enough cover.
She can do her job, and she can enjoy it, too. Just... not today. Yuliana was attached to that one.
She lifts a hand, waving it with fingers curled. It's a signal for the sniper to back off. Yuan is trained to shoot in a crowd -- and not to worry overmuch about collateral damage -- but she follows orders, anyway.
Yuliana taps her ear, and speaks, into the piece there: "For today, let's forget it. Back off and regroup."
Listening, listening, as she's swept up with the orderly evacuation.
"Yeah, meeting up later is fine... I don't expect any of you to swim through this."
The throng of bodies, presumably.
None of which hit the floor.
That's why they're the special operatives!
-^-
"It's not like you to let your attachments compromise the mission," Major Pham remarks, issuing Yuliana a measured look, in the office hours later.
"Ahh, geez..." Yuliana rubs at the back of her head, with a grimace. "You never told me she was twice as pitiful now. How about we just say I got caught off guard?"
Pham sighs. "Your unit is afforded a high degree of individuality in order to operate worldwide, but please remember that our collective resources are leagues more effective than anything you can personally accomplish. Before you presume to go outside mission parameters, you'd do well to remember to stick to your strengths and let other people fulfil theirs." This is not the first time he's had to give this lecture.
This week.
"Yes, sir," Yuliana brings her eyes back forward, though she's still pouting.
"... tell me you at least learned something from this."
"Well, she's no better at being a person now she's left, I'll tell you that much. She's trying to figure out Nouvelle Tokyo through tourist brochures, and she had no clue how to order a sundae. She doesn't seem to remember much," a half-beat of a pause, "though she did get awfully nostalgic around me for a second there. And," she adds, with a deep scowl, "she gave me a big line about getting her very own battery of experiments. What's up with that, huh?"
"She underwent some... demanding procedures, yes," the Major admits. Without missing a beat, he explains: "That's why it's particularly vital we retrieve her. This is for her sake, and for the sake of the Republic."
"It's nice how those things always line up, huh?"
"Indeed." Major Pham doesn't have a funny bone in his body; they were all surgically replaced with superior, humourless prosthetics. It's unlikely he's making a joke about it.
Anyway, the lecture does end, eventually.
-^-
Yuliana collapses onto her bed, with a heavy sigh, and brings the covers up. Her fingers slip a false panel out from the back of her bedside table, surreptitiously, and brings her burner phone up to flick through her other messages. One, in particular, brings a frown rather than a smile to her face.
PRIORITY NOTICE:
Capture 'Athrusa Hsieh'.
... unfortunately, the attached picture makes it very clear that Celestial Being isn't looking for an anime figurine.
"You too, huh," Yuliana mutters, as she puts the phone back and buries her face in her pillow.
"What a pain in the ass..."