2022-05-03: Chasing a Unicorn
- Log: Chasing a Unicorn
- Cast: Saraven Vai, Suberoa Zinnerman
- Where: Palau
- Date: May 03, 2022
- Summary: Saraven meets the captain of the Garencieres.
<Pose Tracker> Saraven Vai has posed.
Nobody outside of the Sleeves has found the Zeon remnants' hidden redoubt yet. The ragtag followers of Full Frontal don't exactly have a massive starfleet to their name, but the old mining asteroid has docking space for a few mix-and-match vessels. Ships pulling in would find one unlikely vessel there of late: A Federation Irish-class ship docked within a heavily concealed maintenance bay, its white hull in the process of being painted red and its engines and gunnery systems in the midst of an overhaul to Universal Maintenance Program weapons the Sleeves have parts for.
The good ship once called the Winish is the fruit plucked by recent operations. The one behind it all can be found standing on an enviro-sealed observation deck overlooking the drydock.
The moniker of the Lilac Gale of Mars has circulated broadly these days. The one bearing the name doesn't seem nearly as large as her title. Saraven's not excessively tall, and the muted way she carries herself makes her seem even smaller, saying nothing of how she's standing right now: At the window, one gloved hand on the pane. The expression caught in the glass is empty of emotion, almost appearing bored with the sight of her prize being overhauled.
If it is indeed hers. Saraven's not a ship captain.
...I'm needed for something different...
She closes her eyes for just a moment. Outwardly, she's soundless - but anyone walking into the observation lounge will find her already tilting her head to look straight at the door and into their eyes.
<Pose Tracker> Suberoa Zinnerman has posed.
Among the other ships nestled in the dock arrays of Palau's extensive hangar, only two ships down from the captured Irish-class, is a perfectly ordinary freighter - one with no cargo manifest, no goods being unloaded, or goods to take aboard.
In fact, pin home territory it would be reasonable to call a spade a spade and identify this vessel's truth - it is none other than the Garencieres, a guerilla craft with a complement of Mobile Suits in its shielded cargo bays, capable of performing operations in the Earth Sphere where Zeon requires a metaphorical scalpel, most recently tasked with the safeguarding of one Mineva Zabi. It is known that a number of its crew have family on Palau; presumably this is the reason the ship is here today.
Her captain, meanwhile, is more immediately here - Suberoa Zinnerman enters the observation lounge, clad in his preferred long coat matching the Garencieres' livery. No rank insignia or other official markings identify him to his fellow Zeon spacenoids, only his face, that of a man who has fought and suffered for the cause for seventeen years. With a curt nod to Saraven, he approaches the window to behold her prize. "Well. That's going to give the Feds a rude surprise one day."
<Pose Tracker> Saraven Vai has posed.
A perfectly ordinary freighter no one would blink twice at. It's a gambit Mars Zeon has used before - though no more, now that everyone knows the liner they used to grab the Winish was a Trojan horse all along.
A perfectly ordinary man no one would blink twice at. Saraven doesn't need to blink. Things tend to make themselves clear, with enough focus. Not everything jumps out instantly. As much as she sees Suberoa Zinnerman, there's a separate way she looks at him. Her mind sizes him up as if through a frosted pane.
"I think it surprised them that we got it at all," she says quietly before looking back towards the ship. Shifting her stance, she makes a little more room for the large man. Not that she really needs to - the observation deck has room.
She does anyway. The shift away looks slightly awkward.
For a few seconds, she doesn't say anything, only staring out at the docking bay. She's not looking at the half-painted battleship anymore. It's the freighter catching her eye.
Then: "I... I hope you didn't have a hard time," she ventures. Her voice is very quiet, lacking in emotional inflection. Saraven looks up at him, expression still hard to read in its blankness. "Getting back here, I mean. I was worried they would just start searching every transport."
<Pose Tracker> Suberoa Zinnerman has posed.
Zinnerman grunts, in a way that could almost be a sharp laugh. Almost. "Not the first time we've made a Clops or Irish eat our burner exhaust, and it won't be the last. Gilboa's real good at making them look foolish."
He turns to face the girl. "I reckon this is the first time we've met in person? Past due for an introduction in my book." He offers a hand. "Suberoa Zinnerman, captain of the Garencieres."
That 'other way' Saraven looks at him cannot fail to notice the cloud on his shoulders, a weight the much older man has grown so accustomed to he might have forgotten why he carries himself the way he does.
<Pose Tracker> Saraven Vai has posed.
She can't possibly miss it - the storms hanging around him. Saraven cants her head a couple degrees and presses her lips gently together.
Storm-petrel... you feel the waves coming, don't you...?
She turns to better face the huge man, giving the hand a couple seconds' worth of a look before raising her own to take it. Hers is quite slim and almost seems to vanish into the old captain's. "I'm Saraven Vai from Mars Zeon. They call me Lilac Gale sometimes. I don't mind it. I like lilac." She doesn't necessarily sound like she likes it, but it's mostly because her tone never really rises or falls beyond a narrow range. She isn't exactly monotone, but she comes close.
"You've been out trying to find it, haven't you," she asks, then, heavy eyebrows coming up slightly. "Laplace's Box, I mean... we haven't found it yet."
<Pose Tracker> Suberoa Zinnerman has posed.
"Lilac's not a bad colour," Zinnerman agrees, before nodding when she asks about what he's been doing. "That's the mission the Commander gave us." He nods. "Found ourselves mostly a whole mess at Side 7, so far, but it's... something." There's an image, for just a moment - a horned horse with a mane of clear white light, rearing against the stars. "Vist asked to meet, but he'd left out a few details; turns out he was going to give us 'the key to the box', whatever that is, and then the Feds caught up with us before we could get anything out of it." He grunts again. "Not a problem. We've seen his 'key' at any rate, we just need to track it down again."
He looks back at the commandeered battleship. "So you're the one people are saying took that ship, are you?"
<Pose Tracker> Saraven Vai has posed.
...Trouble of that kind...
He doesn't have to say it. Saraven can pick up on some sort of weight - a flash of white, a single horn. Her lips come together, her expression briefly broken by a flicker of consternation. It passes, and she looks back out towards the ship bay. "...We didn't find anything like that," she murmurs. "But we... ran into a problem recently, too. A mobile suit I hadn't seen before...."
When Suberoa asks after the captured ship, she brings her hand up to her collar, fussing with the high, quilted neck of the shoulder yoke she wears over her flight suit. "...I'm not used to being a field commander," she concedes quietly. "But Commander Full needs me to do everything I can. I helped plan the operation. I thought the ship's database might have some information about the Box."
Saraven shakes her head. "...It doesn't. I don't think anyone really knows what it is. Except Vist, it sounds like...."
<Pose Tracker> Suberoa Zinnerman has posed.
"The Vist Foundation's been holding the Box over the Federation since the dawn of the Universal Century, sounds like. Baffles me why they'd trade away their ace after so long though." He shrugs, slowly. "I'm not the kind of man who'd make that call I guess - but it makes sense that they'd keep the details of it secret."
He looks back at her. "An unknown Mobile Suit? What kind?" It might be the one his team are chasing, it might not, but he'll never know if he just leaves that be.
<Pose Tracker> Saraven Vai has posed.
Saraven crosses both arms under the curve of her chest, expression creased by a small frown. "...I don't know all the details about it," she admits. "Commander Full believes it's the key to bringing the Federation down. He's very sure of it. So long as that's the case, I want to do what I can to find it."
It bothers her that she hasn't made much headway. Even stealing the ship was just one operation. A bee sting on the ass of a massive dragon that's bound to turn and bite her head off at any minute.
"It was a white mobile suit," she explains then. A shiver races through her as she looks off to one side.
"...It seemed like a civilian flying it, helping us fight off some sort of giant... kaiju monster. But then it started glowing all over its frame and tried to tear my mobile suit apart. The pilot kept apologizing like he wasn't even in control."
<Pose Tracker> Suberoa Zinnerman has posed.
That's too close to be a coincidence. Zinnerman's frown deepens. "And a single horn antenna that split open into a Gundam's v-fin, right? And the pilot... a kid, maybe?"
Of course he'd get in over his head, he thinks to himself.
<Pose Tracker> Saraven Vai has posed.
Saraven blinks once before biting down to her lower lip and turning grey-violet eyes back up towards the big captain.
"You've seen it too," she surmises, hand curling once more at her collar. "Yes... the pilot seemed like he was very young. Not even in a way that was... um. I mean, not as if he had early training."
Saraven herself can't be more than eighteen, emotionally muted or not. For her to notice another pilot's youth is unusual.
<Pose Tracker> Suberoa Zinnerman has posed.
"That mobile suit is Vist's key to the Box. Some top-secret Federation 'anti-Newtype' weapon that he managed to make part of this scheme of his."
He looks back out at the ship formerly known as Winish, in part to gather his thoughts as much as anything else. "On Side 7 we found out the Princess had stowed away - she slipped out to meet with Vist ahead of us and crossed paths with one of the kids attending the school there. He caught her out of high-colony free-fall in a Torohachi mobile worker, apparently, and managed to help her slip away from the retrieval team to boot." He shakes his head. "He seems like the kind of kid to get dragged into that suit, if he thought it would help her."
<Pose Tracker> Saraven Vai has posed.
Saraven pauses, blinking twice. "...Why would they put the key to the Box in a mobile suit," she asks, not really expecting an answer. "Especially one like that."
She lets her hand fall to her side, shifting to look out at the ship as well. One integrated heel clicks lightly on the deck. "...The Princess," she murmurs. She's not yet met Mineva, but she never expected to. Encounters with Zabis on Mars weren't frequent, barring the occasional tiny clone.
She glances back, watching the big captain explain the situation. Lips drawn tightly together, she considers, then nods. "I felt something from him. A... pressure. I don't think he's an ordinary civilian... not like most people, anyway. He has instincts most people don't, but I don't think he's had proper training to use them."
<Pose Tracker> Suberoa Zinnerman has posed.
"All Vist was able to tell us before the Feds crashed the party is that this 'Unicorn Gundam' is important to finding and opening the box, and even then he was light on the details. I'd bet that combat system it carries, that makes it glow like that, is part of why, though I'd be guessing."
He nods. "To catch a single person, especially one as small as the princess, in freefall, while fighting the cross-currents from a colony's rotation? He's got an instinct for piloting and the kind of awareness to know someone was in danger without ever actually seeing them." It's the only explanation he has for what happened. "As soon as he learns how to get control of that Gundam it'll be impossible to get it off him."
<Pose Tracker> Saraven Vai has posed.
"Unicorn... that's what it's called...?"
Saraven scratches one gloved finger against her cheek, just beneath the marking under her eye - an arrow beneath a short horizontal bar, pointing down. "...The combat system was very effective. I'm trained to fight combat aces in advanced machines. Most of them don't do what that mobile suit did. It was as if...." She frowns, grasping mentally for words to describe it. "...I'm not sure, but almost as if it was the machine flying itself, in some way. The pilot kept apologizing."
Her frown returns, eyes downcast as Suberoa puts an unpleasant idea on the table. "...I don't want him to go over to one of the Federation task forces," she murmurs. "We need to try and capture that Gundam, then. If we can get ahold of it as soon as possible, before he learns how to fully use it...."
<Pose Tracker> Suberoa Zinnerman has posed.
"And if he's on Earth, the likelihood of them picking him up is pretty big. We'll have to move quickly and quietly."
"You said you would do anything to find the Box, right? No matter what it is? I'll see if I can get the Commander to transfer you to the Garencieres Team. Shouldn't be too difficult to get him to see the advantages of that, since we'll be able to pool our data on Vist's Unicorn that way."
<Pose Tracker> Saraven Vai has posed.
"The Federation might force him," Saraven concedes. Her inflection is matter-of-fact, as if it's just a thing that happens to people with both gifts and a cool robot.
When Suberoa puts an idea on the table, Saraven looks up at him again, eyebrows lifting a little. Her expression otherwise doesn't change. Internally there's a--
Would Dr. Metta even let me go...?
What would that even be like...?
She opens her mouth a little, then nods slowly. "Dr. Metta from the Mars NRI would probably have to come too, but I don't think she would need much. We haven't had problems operating from the other ships, anyway."
<Pose Tracker> Suberoa Zinnerman has posed.
"The Garencieres should have enough space for another guest. As long as she stays off my bridge when we get caught up in trouble it should be fine." There's a reservedness in allowing this, but... Marida will let him know if she has a problem with a 'newtype doctor' on the ship, he thinks.
He draws himself up again, managing to claw back a vestige of officer's pride. "I suppose I should go cut Gilboa's family dinner short. We'll be needed back out there pretty soon, judging by your story. Then if everything goes over alright, I can properly introduce you to the crew and make sure your suit gets loaded on right."
<Pose Tracker> Saraven Vai has posed.
For all that Saraven can pick up things with supranormal clarity, parsing them out isn't always simple. Her eyes dip, one hand coming up to clasp her opposite elbow. That uncertainty was hard for her to miss.
Maybe he doesn't want too many other people on board?
This worry....
The worry tugs at her consciousness, but when Suberoa draws up again, Saraven nods quietly. "I'll make sure the ground crew load the Varguil up when you're ready for it. I don't have a lot of other things I'll need. Thank you for your offer. I... I think if we work together, we'll be able to get the White Unicorn for sure."
<Pose Tracker> Suberoa Zinnerman has posed.
"Catching the Unicorn is only the first step. We'll then have to figure out what this little puzzle the Vist Foundation have made out of it means." He nods. "I'll see you then, Saraven."
With that, the guerilla captain turns and departs the observation lounge, heading down to the town carved out of the rock of Palau to visit his crew with the news that their leave, already intended to be brief, is being cut short. Fortunately for him, he's the kind of man they'd follow through Hell if it seemed like he had a plan to get them all out.