2022-06-02: That's Why You're Ours
- Log: That's Why You're Ours
- Cast: Arriety Hearn, Puru Two
- Where: Ra Mari
- Date: 2nd June 2022
- Summary: Arriety catches up with her big sis Callie.
<Pose Tracker> Puru Two has posed.
Home is where you feel welcome.
Maybe it's not just one place: someone can have many homes. Some people feel more at home in transit than they do when stationary.
Whatever your feelings are, we all hope Arriety feels like the Ra Mari is, in some ways... home.
---
It's sometime around 1900 hrs according to the ship's clock, and Eight's mobile home is moored somewhere safely in a field of dummy asteroids and, probably, defensive emplacements. Hell, it's probably friendly territory. It isn't active wartime deployment mode, so the atmosphere is suffused with an air of mild... calm. A sense that one's shoulders can untense, and you don't have to look to the stars every five minutes for an oncoming threat.
Adding to this sense of calm is Arriety's big sis inviting her to one of the crew lounges for a catch-up! Callisto has been away a lot recently, on this mission or that assignment. So this is a return to the calm norm, at least.
The lounge in question is basically like those ones Quattro was asking Camille if he'd heard of some loser called 'Char Aznable' in. It would comfortably seat about eight people, has a central table flanked by comfy bench-seats, and the walls are programmable display units. They're currently programmed with the view from a deck overlooking a bamboo forest.
Callisto is waiting there for her little sis to arrive. She's brought with her a thermos of something hot, and a large plate with a lid covering it... whatever could it be?
<Pose Tracker> Arriety Hearn has posed.
It took a while for Arriety to really feel home at the Ra Mari. It didn't work out the first time, after all; after one battle too many, she just... cracked. Couldn't cope with the stress, the reality of it all. It turns out that dramatically declaring you'll stay with your closest friends and family only means so much when your body gives way.
But she's better now. She's transformed a portion of the kitchen into her own space. She's made her own room a little more hers. She... well, she seems to have pushed her own discovery of what it means to be a combatant out here...
Arriety appears, in that turtleneck, oversized jacket, and gloves combo of hers. She looks around gently, and says, "This always looks like you're meant to do martial arts in it or something..."
<Pose Tracker> Puru Two has posed.
Callie has a wry little smile as the door slides open and Arriety dips into the lounge. "I don't think Eight would approve of anyone doing judo in here unless she got to join in." and she waves the girl over. While her presence feels a little tired, it's not a bone-deep exhaustion or anything. And there's an uptick of comfort as Arriety joins the room anyway, so clearly she hasn't been summoned for a serious chat or anything.
"I realized it's been a few weeks since we got to spend any time together, so I had to make up for that." the redhead unscrews the top of the thermos, and the smell of green tea wafts outwards. "I had to get some help to make some decent tea, but... worth it. Is it too cold in here for you, or is it okay?"
<Pose Tracker> Arriety Hearn has posed.
"Eight would win all those fights, too," Arriety adds with a quiet smile and sits down next to her bigger sis. She exhales very quietly, in deep thought as Callie reminds her that it's been weeks since they really last spoke. "... a lot's happened to me. I have a feeling a lot happened to you too."
She looks to the thermos and perks up. "Wow, nice... where'd you get the tea from? It doesn't smell like the usual cheap stuff that comes with the MREs."
<Pose Tracker> Puru Two has posed.
The cushions at the back and bottom of the bench squeak slightly with Callisto's shifted weight. She's wearing a black v-neck tee and the regulation Londo Bell(le) trousers, but not the collared uniform. It's not real military hours, clearly. "Yeah... a lot." she confirms, but without any hesitation. The feeling underlying her comment is that perhaps not all of it is bad.
Steam drifts upwards from freshly-poured cups of tea. Sadly, the cups aren't traditional or anything. They're just bog standard ceramic mug from the kitchen, but Arriety's has a little sticker of Myrme on the front. "You like it? I asked Howmei if she could lend us some, since I said we've only got the instant stuff here. You really left a good impression on her!"
<Pose Tracker> Arriety Hearn has posed.
Arriety smiles and says, "I... um. Mmm. I mean, I can get into it as much or as little as you want. You too, of course. If anything's bothering you... I wanna hear it too," which is a rare point of brightness from usually-gloomy Arriety, perhaps, too mixed up in her own troubles to be much help hearing others out. Something's a little more aligned with her aura now.
"Wow... Miss Howmei really helped us out time and time again," she breathes into the steam of the cup, smiling. Siip.
<Pose Tracker> Puru Two has posed.
Callisto remains leaned back into her seat. She still has a ways to go, but this is part of that healing process. Doing the things that you want, rather than the things you're forced to, with the people you want to do them with. She lifts the mug for a sip... still not the biggest fan of green tea, but it tastes better than sweaty Gatorade vitamin liquid in the lab. So it's all relative.
"Mmm. Okay, you go first." she suggests after leaning forward a touch. "I want to hear anything that's been on your mind. Then I'll tell you what I've been up to, how's that?"
<Pose Tracker> Arriety Hearn has posed.
Arriety's silent for a while longer, as she enjoys the tea... she definitely likes tea, more than Callie does. "Uhh... geez, what've I been up to. I went to another Sheryl Nome concert, this time in Tsutsujidai... it's this strange ward in Tokyo where you have to fall asleep on a train to get to, is the best way I can put it."
A longer pause. "I kinda fell apart since kaiju attacked that one... had a real bad time. Then I had to attend a party in Shenzhen, and met this weird lady I think I offended... it's-- strange, it's like everything around her was... just a blank, psychically. Kinda nice in a way, but..."
The smaller girl frowns deeply. "... hmm... it got kinda heated, I guess, and I kinda got defensive since she was on Rena's case. I talked to Eight about it and... I dunno, I'm sorting some things out..."
More tea. Tea is calming. "The whole messy package, Eight said..."
<Pose Tracker> Puru Two has posed.
Callisto is listening silently on Arriety's story at first! By this point in time she hasn't gone to Tsutsujidai, so her nose wrinkles slightly at the mention of arriving there on a train you have to fall asleep on. "Eh...?" she echoes, head canting to one side. "Mmm, go on..." she sounds confused, but it's clear that she believes whatever Arriety is saying. The warm glow of trust!
Her brow creases to a gentle frown after a few minutes, though. "That sounds like it was scary. A monster attack and then... mm--sorry, tell me more about this lady that was messing with you?"
The lid is lifted from the plate on their shared table: it's a cake! A small one, like from a cafe. It's a round, stacked cheesecake... probably also made on the Nadesico as a gift from Howmei and the girls, judging from the impeccable craft!
"I guess, what do you mean, like... you couldn't feel her presence?" Callisto tries to think this through with Arriety. "Or was it like you got cut off from everyone, when you got close?"
As Arriety sips her tea, Callisto gives her a gentle pat on the back. She seems proud of her for coming this far. For being so brave.
<Pose Tracker> Arriety Hearn has posed.
Arriety makes a little gesture like a sphere and explains, "You know how you and I can sense each other... I mean, I don't know how it is for you, but I tend to see people's emotions as auras, in differing shapes and colours around them..." A longer pause. "Around her, it was like... all feeling cuts off. Like she's a black hole where things get muffled silent..."
There's a hesitant pause. "A part of me kinda liked it, admittedly." She even gets a pat in the back! Yay! "It was like being six again... before everything happened, before..."
She looks like she realises something, but gets distracted by cheesecake. Her eyes widen. How often do they get treats like THIS? "... she asked me if I just wanted to live a quiet life, if I had the choice."
A sip, and she grubbily gets her hands on a slice of cheesecake on a plate and digs right into it. "Do you know what the answer in the end was... once I worked through it?"
<Pose Tracker> Puru Two has posed.
There's a gentle rustle of sleeves as Callisto folds her arms, slipping into thought in the wake of Arriety's rather excellent explanation about the sixth sense, and her perception of it therein. "Mmm." the noise is vaguely uplifted, a rising note, rather than a downwards one. An encouragement to keep talking while she references her own understanding. How does she put it into words?
---
How do you explain that which simply... is?
(Puru Two turns her head to regard the girl beside her. "Two," the girl starts, her voice carrying a singsong and joyous quality. Though her face and stature are almost identical, she wears her hair in a loose, combed part. The flicker of concern in her voice is matched by a warm pulse that thrums through the air and the ground on a wavelength normal Humans can't perceive. The colour of her soul is beautiful. "Are you okay? You're cold...")
---
"For me," Callisto begins her musing. "It's just... a feeling. Most of the time. It's always there. Like the way I can see you right now, I can hear your voice, and I know you're there if all my other senses just shut off. When you get upset, it's like that feeling is so strong, it bleeds over. Like you can see the feelings, but I just can't say 'it's red'."
But that's not to interrupt Arriety's story entirely, it's to help accentuate it!
Because she wants to hear Arriety's answer, too.
"I think I know what you said. But, you should tell me, because it's your choice. And you should be proud of making it."
<Pose Tracker> Arriety Hearn has posed.
Arriety makes no motion as to whether or not she sometimes sees the girl that looks just like Callie-sis in her youth, who at times appears to be a guiding figure, and other times... a very silly person who adds a bit of levity to a situation. Hmm.
"... I get what you mean. The whole colour thing -- it's a way of, um, coping I got taught, when I was smaller with Rena and Eight. Colour made it possible to explain something I couldn't possibly explain," Arriety remarks, thinking back upon it. "Because... when I was six, I needed any way to explain what I was seeing... so we started saying, 'you're red and spiky', or 'you're blue-green and soft'."
She bobs her head one way. "I think these kinds of things work both ways, since the more I got used to that way of putting it... the more I saw it in my mind's eye too..."
She pauses longer.
"I realised... I didn't want to live a quiet life. I realised there was a violent and angry Arriety who wanted to fight that woman who was being rude and aggressive to my friends. Someone who might even be okay with spilling blood. ... the Arriety who felt gleeful on that day, when the kaiju attacked, that those bullies from the drama club got squished. The hurting Arriety who, on that day when we were with Ruri, you had to reel back from the golden doors where her parents were waiting."
That's a whole lot to get through, so she rewards herself with cheesecake. "But there's also the Arriety who's playing Dozoo Degwa with Rena, who's hugging Eight and making banchan and bulgogi for you and learning recipes from Miss Howmei, who's going to Sheryl Nome concerts to try new things... the Arriety who wants to stay with her friends."
A gulp of tea, as she kicks her legs forward. "I had a bad habit of saying only one of those Arrietys were real, when I was feeling sad or happy. But as Eight said... it's the whole messy package..."
She glances aside. "I was so worked up trying to convince myself I wanted a quiet life away from the dark and violent world that I was busy telling a big, bleeding part of me that wasn't me."
<Pose Tracker> Puru Two has posed.
Despite that last bit being a flashback:
<Pose Tracker> Puru Two has posed.
For Arriety's benefit, actually, yes, there is a phantom of a girl who looks identical to Callisto! She's hanging around nearby. But not physically nearby, and not visibly nearby. Nearby on an axis which can't be measured on any grid we can think of. It's not a powerfully tangible presence, it's something that fades in and out from time to time. Often accompanied by a fae sense of amusement.
Someday... maybe, she'll get an explanation?
Callisto seems to be a good listener, but that's nothing new to Arriety. Her big-sis gaze is fixed on the smaller, quieter girl, even as she leans forward with a plastic knife to split their gift-cake into two. Arriety's slice is slightly bigger. And Callie will brook no quarter about this. "Yeah--that's sensible." she chimes in on how the other girl used to perceive people as colours. She is quiet, or at least, soft-spoken. "We grew up being taught exactly what we were feeling, so, maybe we missed out on feeling our way through it naturally..."
Hopefully it isn't too uncomfortable being looked at. Callie has a bad habit of staring when she's listening intently. She tends to notice, though, and deflects her gaze up to the forehead. Nice and neutral.
"Mmm." that noise again. The now-thinking noise. "I see what Eight means. That sounds like her, alright... heh, always wiser than me. I agree."
Is a headpat condescending? Hopefully not, because it's what's on offer.
"That's a pretty big lesson. We all have parts of ourself we want to hurry past. Pretend they aren't a big part of us. But they are, and we can tear ourselves apart trying to force it to come true. I know the Arriety who wants a big sister and friends she can cook dinner for has times when she's angry, hurt, upset, confused..."
A pause for a moment's chuckle. "It took me forever to learn that! I wish someone had just said to me I could be the whole messy package, when I was a kid."
Force Ghost Adult Elpeo Puru rolls her eyes on the peanut gallery plane of existence, because the iron-e-meter is about to overload and pop.
<Pose Tracker> Arriety Hearn has posed.
One day, Arriety wants to say hello to the ephemeral presence surrounding her big sister and introduce herself. Because she understands, on an intuitive level, that presences that surround the living have incredibly powerful bonds, for better or worse.
Yes, that's how her parents -- or at least, the presence that she perceives as her parents -- keeps threatening to tug her across the line in which the living cannot cross...
If Arriety feels uncomfortable, she's not saying it. She's kind of worked up at the moment, because pushing all these feelings out takes a lot of work and calories, hence the cheesecake. Headpats are just an incredible bonus.
"I'm lucky. I have you, and Eight, and Rena, and Minae, and Anita, and Ruri, and even people like Dr. Kamille and Miss Howmei and Roux and Judau and others..." Arriety can't even possibly begin to list them all. Her world's expanded so much in just a few months, hasn't it?
"People who... I mean, I know you've all hurt from horrible things in the past before, but... in turn, you could warn me and stop me from being hurt in the same ways..."
She lowers her head. "I think I'm beginning to understand what it means, when the Biosensor reacts, when-- the 'seed' shatters apart. What it's trying to tell me. What I'm trying to tell myself, even..."
<Pose Tracker> Puru Two has posed.
It's weird, right? How do you greet a conscious wave of feelings and thoughts? Maybe you need to level up Newtype to at least Lv. 8 to communicate with ghosts without looking a little silly.
"When you put it that way," Callisto joins the thought process on Arriety's rapidly growing social network. "You've got a big family now... I'm glad." she withdraws her hand from the other girl's hairline. Her presence is kind of a big cloudy headpat anyway, when there's support talk like this going on. "You're right, too. Even at our worst, a lot of us don't want to see someone hurt the same way we did. So..."
There's a pause, because talking about feelings is hard! "I'm glad I can help you feel like you're in a better place, okay? Phew. Good job saying all that." she laughs, "I don't know if I could put it that well!"
<Pose Tracker> Arriety Hearn has posed.
Arriety lets out a definite 'whew', grinning brightly and definitely benefiting from ambient headpat energies. The smile gets just a little bit more sober, and she says, "I know it's not like we have a good conversation and everything will be smooth sailing. That's kind of the mistake I made last time. So... when it's good, when it's bad, when it's going horrible... I'll keep it all in mind. That's part of the being Arriety experience."
She finishes that thought with a big gulp of tea as it gets cooler, then says, "That's me, so... anything you wanna tell me in turn, Callie-sis?"
<Pose Tracker> Puru Two has posed.
This tea tho.
"Where do I start?" Callisto laughs again, as the culmination of Arriety's thought process leaves the room buzzing with an ambient energy of fulfilment. Like whatever tension may or may not have been there is gone, and the absence feels good and fres and natural.
"Mmm. Okay. There's one big thing that happened to me very recently... I had to do a lot of thinking about it. I'm still thinking about it constantly, if ... I'm being honest." she begins her explanation, still smiling. At ease. Maybe it's the sense of comfort which makes broaching the topic even possible.
"Arriety, where I was born... ah, I'm sorry. This is gonna be a little heavy?" she pauses, knowing this will probably harsh that buzz. "To make a long story short: I grew up in a lab with a lot of identical sisters, and most of them died at the Battle of Axis--the Neo Zeon civil war, not the one where it disappeared." she clarifies with more ease than she was expecting. "It... hurt, you know? To be the one that lived, when you can't think of why? Was I faster, more skilled, stronger than them? Or just lucky?"
Unspoken are the specifics. And yet, the proximity between the two girls and their familial bond works faster than words, anyhow. Space. Fighting. War. The usual source of hurt feelings for gifted spacenoid pilots. These weren't just kids killed in the crossfire.
"So--I saw one of them. When I was helping Subaru, from the Nadesico. I felt one of my sisters, she was the twelth one. She's still alive, and I'm ... having a lot of feelings." she finishes lamely. "She's still out there. Fighting, surviving... I don't know what to feel?"
<Pose Tracker> Arriety Hearn has posed.
Arriety is silent and attentive, her eye contact the primary way of indicating that she's listening. It's hard to think of Arriety as a good listener sometimes, the way she's very worked up inside of her own mind, and... truth be told, it is like that sometimes. But not right now.
But what Callisto says...
It makes her look at that other Puru again for a moment, as she seemingly flits with pride and amusement. Perhaps, another step has been taken to free her of the past.
"I..." Arriety pauses to think of how to put it. "I understood there was something very dark in your past, the same way there was something dark in Rena and Eight's pasts. But... I didn't ask, since... I didn't need to know more than what I knew about you as my sister Callie. The way Rena and Eight's been my childhood friends. I understood people ran away from something bad to go to Winter Wonderland, where... they can be more than their pasts."
This is a lot to take in, though. Identical sisters, and they... they all mostly died in battle. "... I won't say I know for sure what that's like for you, but that feeling of being the survivor..." She lowers her head. "... that's what I feel when I see my parents in that realm, too. Questioning why I'm the one here instead of them."
Her eyes widen slowly, though. The twelfth one? "... do you... want to go see her?"
<Pose Tracker> Puru Two has posed.
In this moment, an important peice of context is that the presence of this other person--now much less of a mystery now that Callisto has spilled the beans on her extended familly--draws nearer. In this sense, it's as if the axis you measure thoughts on (the Ghost axis? Has anyone coined this yet??) comes closer into alignment with the world the two girls are thinking, talking, and feeling in. Arriety needs no visual to know what it means: sympathy. Comfort given. Forgiveness, too?
"It's... it's okay, I feel like I knew that you knew? That you knew you didn't ... guh, it sounds so convoluted." Callisto starts to talk, but finds herself giving another little laugh as she tries to give her feelings form. "I didn't want to talk about it. I was scared--I still am scared, that the men who made us are still out there somewhere, hoping to get their investment back. But the longer I hung around, the more I felt lousy keeping secrets..."
Well, it's out there now. The redhead exhales quietly, looking better for it. "It's odd though--my sisters... they aren't calling me to come join them. The ones who passed away, I mean. I've never felt something like what you've told me. That's why I was so worried when you said it."
"As for... her, my twelth sister... I don't know. It's scary." she admits after a moment of introspection. Even admitting that it's scary is, itself, kind of scary. "What if I've changed too much? What if she's changed too much? What if we're on opposite sides of all this stupid fighting? I thought I'd be searching for the rest of my life, but suddenly..."
<Pose Tracker> Arriety Hearn has posed.
It's not a feeling that needs words -- Arriety understands full well the girl on the other side of Callisto is someone who's been urging for healing in her sister's heart; she isn't a lingering spirit that beckons one to the afterlife, but rather... something strong and warm. It speaks to the strength of her spirit.
"I know... I just--" Arriety pauses. "I felt like it might've been a comfort to let you know that secrets are okay. Because one way or another, I think all of us had secrets, and we were all already comfortable without having to know them. That's the kind of relationship we all have, I feel."
But it is out there, and that's okay too.
Her sisters never called for her to join her...
"... it is a bit different for everyone, I suppose, or... it could be the Bio-Sensor playing with me. Dr. Kamille did warn me to be very, very careful with it," Arriety does admit. "Like you once said, I think... it's a bit of a pandora's box they opened, when they made that."
But as for the twelfth...
"You've been searching for so long, but now that you've found what you want, you're not sure... I think I kinda get how that feels," Arriety remarks, gazing off towards the fake bamboo forest. "... ... I can't know how she feels, or what she's like. But if she's on the other side, would you let that stop you? You know I'd help too... because sometimes the most important things we have to do are the scariest things."
<Pose Tracker> Puru Two has posed.
Callisto closes her eyes for a few moments and her head leans to one side. Comes to rest against Arriety's. It seems there is comfort in this conversation, catharsis to be had as a great many secrets tumble one after the other. "No, I wouldn't let it stop me in the end." she concludes with a relaxed tone. "Judau and Roux didn't let it stop them. I need to be brave like that."
The conversation, really, culminates in this thought: "I was ashamed when I got this fear sometimes, that you'd find it scary if you knew I was someone's freakshow lab project." that's it. That's really the part that's been dug deep inside the girl's soul all this time. That's one of the little dark seeds that gives off doubt, unease, fear.
"I should've known you wouldn't. That's why you're our Arriety."
The ghostly presence all but raises a finger to her lips, more for the audience's benefit than that of the two girls sharing secrets, and recedes from this space. It's not easy having a dummy like Puru Two for a sibling, but the many presences of the Newtype Battalion, wherever they are, all agree: this dummy is, at least, being honest with herself now. And she's in good hands.
They wouldn't ask for much more than that.