2022-05-15: Standing on the precipice of oblivion, you declined to look down
- Log: Standing on the precipice of oblivion, you declined to look down.
- Cast: Yuliana Dispersal, Shelby Korts
- Where: Balic (West Africa)
- Date: 2022-05-15 (0096)
- Summary: Yuliana relaxes on the beach after a hard day's work. Shelby does not. The question of what Yuliana is goes unanswered -- for now.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Balic isn't a bad place, really, leaving aside the civic unrest. You might like to avoid the corner store on Sundays, or avoid giving an opinion on a few locally contentious issues which indicate a far greater allegiance than first implied, but -- like most regions -- it finds an equilibrium, a day-to-day beat which lets mothers buy milk and bread and daughters go to work.
And it has a port. It's got that going for it. A lovely port city --
Water taken by salt has a different profile entirely to the clean stuff; it's all rough around the edges, all sharp in the air. The sensation of a seaside town is the constant awareness of erosion in the air -- in the rust at the edges of the vehicles, the rot of the wood in the pier -- always, at its edges, ALMOST organic. It's a scent with its own soundtrack, omnipresent gulls crying in the air.
Yuliana Dispersal is in a swimsuit, stretched out along the beach. She is completely dry. Not even her ankles have touched the water. Perhaps she just doesn't care to foul such a fine piece of apparel; a little frill at the edges of the teal bikini, all tied in a bow at her shoulder and her hip.
(There are, of course, the typical scars one sees on anyone after so long in service; they're obscured a little by her darker skin, but she doesn't seem at all bothered displaying any of them. Really, the only one she ever hides is... well, it's strange how her hair is covering half her face, isn't it?)
The area immediately available to her grasp -- about six feet across, in all directions -- is completely still, completely silent, with a strange warning-feeling as one draws closer to that epicentre. Perhaps that's why she isn't crowded on the beach, despite it being otherwise quite full of people.
Or maybe it's her absolutely magnificent beach towel. It's probably the beach towel. Now she's not wearing her typical scarf, she seems like she's poured her colour appreciation into her towel, instead: blatant splashes of blue, pink, and yellow.
<Pose Tracker> Shelby Korts has posed.
One of the advantages of being a member of the Shuffle Alliance is that you get to see the world from different places and vantagepoints, and in person. One of the disadvantages, however, is that you often have to change your plans. You have to stow Mobile Suits in safe locales or under tarps or pay off the locals with most of the money you have access to at the drop of a hat to keep people from blowing the whistle on your very-not-subtle machine.
Shelby Korts is used to operating this way.
While she'd rather be out of Balic entirely, off to the orbital elevator and getting back into space? She's here for one more day-- some arrangements still need to be made. The beach is full of people -- of enough noise and joy and people honestly and legitimately trying to enjoy their day that it feels a little more familiar and comfortable for someone as openly psychic as the young woman is. While being someplace like this is often overwhelming, it's also something she's wanted. Needed?
It's a memory, though it's probably not even one of her own. She's never been to the beach before, at least... she doesn't think.
But the double-edged sword that is Shelby Korts' abilities allows her to sense -- feel -- that pecularity in the near-distance until it shifts like a raging sea: From a familiar void to near-nausea as she feels herself being ... disrupted? Its disorienting even at a distance-- a testament to how intrinsic and long she's been 'this' way, even before the lab.
But then she sees the source, and it isn't too hard. Yuliana will undoubtedly be able to see her, too, from just inside the edge of the crowd staying away from her: Pink hair around shoulder length, thick-framed glasses. A t-shirt with some food joke on it. An out-of-season hoodie in orange and black with white trim, and snug-fit sport shorts that stop at mid-thigh. In one hand, she's got running sneakers she does not want to get sand in.
Her expression is vacant, but likely a familiar one: Morbid curiosity brings her this close, but she dare not take one step further.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Yuliana, of course, is here for work. It's all very official Federation business, including the paperwork she had to do to justify deploying out of nowhere when she was supposed to be here in a supportive context. Having done that paperwork, she's... taking a day off. Who's going to stop her? The Canary Cadet? (That's still not their name, Captain.)
And as it happens, she still has a swimsuit in her work suitcase from one of her last excursions.
Dark sunglasses protect Yuliana's eyes from the sun; they can't protect her mind from the carved-out hollow where information ought to go. In another lifetime, she might have felt those overwhelming-comforting feelings, keen as knives under her skin. But it's all gouged out! There's nothing left but empty space, where connection should have been.
... it makes her a peerless predator of a certain type of person, whether they know it or not.
Yuliana looks over her shoulder and tilts her sunglasses down, brow raising in the same gesture, looking straight at Shelby. A smile spreads over her face, and -- it looks warm, warmed by the sun and the sand and the thousand bodies around them, not a one too close.
Her hand lifts, palm up and fingers flat, until they too curl in, from pinky down along to index. It's a familiar gesture in enough places -- 'come here'.
<Pose Tracker> Shelby Korts has posed.
The longer she stands there, the more it looks obvious that she's not just someone who knows Yuliana's there. There's something horribly wrong with Yuliana. It isn't like the Gaplant pilot; this is not a feeling where something was simply cut out and poured full with all the malice and anger. It isn't even like the feeling of being in Tsutsujidai, where it was like being one -- of two -- souls within a whole massive city and the silence was aching.
It's just. Wrong.
There's a slight tilt of her head, a reflexive cringe as though she's feeling some kind of pain before blinking and swallowing down the bile deep in her throat. Shelby checks her exits with military precision before the long hesitation--
-- and then a step.
Every movement feels like an absolute eternity. It actually, physically hurts as voices distort and bend into gutteral sounds and echoes of what they should be, and there is a slight wobble to her gait as she comes closer to Yuliana. It's like rumbles and screeching being drawn toward the void, but then Shelby Korts reaches the event horizon: She stops just outside of six feet from Yuliana, looking down at the lounging beachgoer and finding concentration and digging deep to try to center herself.
This is wrong. It's so, so wrong. Everything she hears behind her slurring and raging, everything in front of her is just ... a void. This is the void she felt in the fight.
Each word is spoken like a human, but there's obvious concentration in her voice. "Lovely day today, isn't it?"
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Yuliana pushes herself to a proper sitting position, on her towel, as Shelby drags herself in. As easily as that!, she remarks, to herself, with loathing and glee in equal measure.
Perhaps it's the tragedy of the open, to reach out.
Her smile remains -- grows a little wider, even, perhaps because the shy girl has come to say hello. "It's so nice when the sun's out like this, isn't it?" Yuliana asks, just like a human. There's no tearing to her voice, no audible sense of the heavens ripped from their hinges, some horrific rupture between one sense and the others.
No: it doesn't sound that way at all.
It doesn't... sound... that way, at all.
"Dry heat doesn't much agree with me," and she looks Indonesian, perhaps a shade paler than some of her island fellows, which might explain why. She plucks her sunglasses from her face, holds them in a curled hand. "But out here on the coast, it's positively pleasant! Are you enjoying your time here, too?"
As if to indicate just how she knows Shelby is a visitor, she gestures, loosely, to the sneakers she's holding. A native to the coast would wear shoes which could stand a little sand, perhaps.
<Pose Tracker> Shelby Korts has posed.
This is probably the longest that Shelby Korts has been in a sunny climate in over three years-- or hell, even before that. Light skin that's only been getting the non-tan of a climate-controlled set of mirrors through treated windows and solar arrays, and her accent is definitely Britannian... albeit there's a definite spacer sort of tone to her voice.
"Very much. I didn't really ever get to see the sea."
Another burst of voices behind her, though garbled before the edge of the horizon. In front of her, a voice that is speaking only words-- she cannot hear the woman's thoughts. Not meaningful ones, not emotional ones, not even the incidental ones that become so much noise interpreted by her sixth sense.
Then her hand wheels around in a small quick circle. "Growing up. I mean."
Shelby's free hand tucks into the pocket of her hoodie, curling her hand into a fist and trying to push her focus there-- digging her fingernails into her palm. "Visiting too? The food's really good around here. Look for the smaller places. The ones that aren't the tourist traps. Usually the best stuff to eat."
what are you what are you what are you what are you--
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Britannian, spacer, Newtype. All the things Yuliana hates best, all packaged in one eminently convenient young lady.
Ah! The universe is kind.
"You might say I saw a shade too much of it," Yuliana supposes, with the intimation of a secret. She slips her sunglasses atop her head in a smooth gesture. "The sea, that is. But absence makes the heart grow fonder, wouldn't you agree? Why, perhaps that's why you're here today." She remains entirely personable; entirely friendly.
Then again, there'd be no way to tell if she wasn't.
Yuliana reaches over for her bag, resting half-open on her brightly-coloured beach towel, and pulls out a bag of something fried. "You're quite right! Actually, I happened to pick up some plantain chips on my way here," she says, opening the bag up and holding it out. "I don't suppose you'd like some?"
She pauses for a breath, before she adds, with a tone which sounds quite warm: "I'm Yuliana, by the way," which makes them officially not strangers, any more. "Yuliana Dispersal." She leaves the Captain silent; she's off-duty right now, after all.
<Pose Tracker> Shelby Korts has posed.
The longer Shelby stands at the outer periphery of the event horizon, the harder it is for her to keep focusing. The garbled voices behind her continue to wave and spike in the back of her mind, and Yuliana continues to present as ... something else, in human form.
"Oh, I'm... j-just passing through. ... Taking a trip."
And then the innocent gesture of offering her snacks on the beach. Her hand quivers a little in her pocket, running over every single trick and technique she has for keeping her mind in focus, but hard-trained social skills-- attempts to be normal-- give her the urge to step forward just even one more step just to be polite.
And before she finishes taking that step, she lets out a grunt of pain between clenched teeth and steps back. There's no way she doesn't know, is there? What she is? The scars don't look ... well, they don't look quite the same, at least at a glance--
don't step into the void don't step in don't go in the dark
Shelby's hand lifts to grip her head, then slipping to the side of her face, adjusting her glasses. Her brow furrows harder. "No thank you," she says, through a few heavy breaths. "I'm not hungry."
'I'm Yuliana, by the way.'
"I'll be sure to remember that," Shelby says, mouth pulling into a flat line. She takes another step back, the cacophany becoming more recognizable. She's testing her boundaries again, now that she's stood at the precipice. With that last pull toward the endless silence, on the edge of everything Wrong, the once-Zeon pilot moves to the question she's been meaning to ask for the last few minutes:
"What are you?"
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Yuliana has excellent trigger discipline when she's on the hunt, which is to say: she doesn't burst out laughing, when Shelby stops mid-step and backpedals instead. Her smile does widen, though, in that moment -- before she puts on vague disappointment, instead.
"Oh? What a shame," Yuliana says, lightly, as she plucks a piece of dried fruit from the bag and pops it into her mouth, as if to say, sub rosa: it's not poisoned.
Nibble, nibble. She'll remember that. She'll step back. She'll...
Delightful, Yuliana thinks, as her eyes narrow, and her teeth flash in a thin-lipped grin. It is not quite so warm.
She puts the bag to one side, and presses a hand to her towel, long fingers to suit a pianist or a weaver or an assassin. Short nails, painted asphyxiation-blue. They shine in the sunlight, as Yuliana pushes herself standing -- she's not tall, but at five-feet-five she isn't notably short, either.
The most horrible part about Yuliana being on her feet is -- she can step forward, now, towards Shelby. She can prove the precipice is around her, not that one distinct place on the beach. The edge, past which lies --
"I can show you," she says, voice low to a purr, low as her eyelids over a jealous-green gaze.
"Come here."
Words, not gestures; an order, not a suggestion.
<Pose Tracker> Shelby Korts has posed.
She's standing. Hackles raise; Shelby getting a ripple of goosebumps up her arms and spine as her fight or flight instinct starts kicking in. Yuliana's movement is matched with an equal step back where applicable; the Newtype's eyes stuck somewhere between panic and calculation as her senses continue to mingle between jarringly chaotic and what lies Beyond-- the place that which she does not want to go.
'Come here.'
She recalls an important piece of advice she was given when this entire enterprise began with the Shuffle Alliance:
'If you ever feel unsafe, get in the suit and run. We'll find you.'
Breath hitching in her throat, pain throbbing in her head and pulse pounding with such ferocity one could almost take her pulse by just staring at her, Shelby plants one bare foot. She turns, and then she starts to just run.
At first, she nearly barrels into a few passing people at the edge of Yuliana's 'free' space, but the farther she goes, the more coordinated she becomes. Her grip stays tight on her sneakers, her feet pound against hot sand, and she just runs like her life depends on it.
It very well may.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Shelby's foot plants, at the same instant Yuliana's does. That moment of tension, arm half-lifting -- the prelude to a lunge. Even without those subtle movements, the way her grin splits her face is hardly welcoming, any more.
Tragically, that's the moment Shelby takes to listen to her instincts, and run.
"Hmm," Yuliana remarks, as she straightens up, her hand coming to rest on her hip instead. She chuckles, to herself, fingers coming up to fan over her delighted smile. "She must have forgotten an appointment, I suppose...!"
Entirely comfortable claiming the space around her, she streeetches, up to the sky. Up to her toes; down on her heels. She doesn't bother chasing after Shelby. She doesn't even think to try.
Surely she was just getting up to stretch, if anyone were to watch her, from another part of the beach.
Yuliana lays herself back down, all sprawled on her belly, protected from the sand by her magnificent beach towel. She reaches over, and nibbles on a plantina chip. Nibble, nibble.
"Run all you like, for now," Yuliana murmurs, in the quiet of her oblivion, as she looks out over the calm sea.
"But one day... you may find you have no place left to flee to."
A hand reaches out, held long in front of her; she watches her fingers curl, distantly.
"... if you will not come to me..."