2022-06-11: The Truth of Things
- Log: The Truth of Things
- Cast: Heero Yuy, Zechs Merquise, Relena Peacecraft
- Where: A Cafe in Rural Coastal Japan
- Date: 11th June 2022
- Summary: A meeting in a sleepy cafe between two Peacecrafts and the boy standing in the midst of their powerful ideologies.
<Pose Tracker> Heero Yuy has posed.
At a sleepy cafe in a coastal city in Japan...
Heero Yuy is currently working a night shift, having relocated himself once more. He keeps moving, from place to place, finding no rest in being in one place for too long; he doesn't quite understand why -- sometimes he justifies it as his desire to finally see the world, now that he's been freed of the singular, all-encompassing 'Mission'.
But that's not quite it. Maybe he's running away...
Because no matter what he does... whether it's that girl and her dog... or a whole plane full of diplomats whose deaths now stoke the Bloody Valentine conflict to a fever pitch...
...
These are idle thoughts, as he cleans the glasses with a soft white rag. The sign says OPEN, but there are no customers at this time of night.
<Pose Tracker> Zechs Merquise has posed.
It's a thought that's occurred to others, as well-- that perhaps Heero Yuy is running away.
It's no secret from what, largely fungible in the ranking order of a long list of justifications thereof. It's testament to these efforts that no opposing forces have moved in to arrest and try the young pilot for his crimes, as of yet-- and testament to the careful calculations of other operatives that this nomadic barista adventure has not taken Yuy off all radar screens.
"Target is alone." The simple, succinct communique comes in tight-beam encryption to only one man's receiver, and moments later, a nondescript black vehicle with heavily tinted windows rolls up the street adjacent to his latest coffee shop.
Lithe and graceful, a figure dressed in pristinely pressed blacks and reds reminiscent of a military uniform-- but presently bereft of identifying sigils and rank badges-- exits a rear door thereof. A dark cloak further conceals his figure, but once within the shop, it's hard to miss the unusual visage of the noteworthy, metallic mask Zechs wears, obscuring his features in paradoxical turn. Booted footfalls carry him to the counter opposite Heero, and he settles into a stool as if expecting to be served.
That normalcy is likely to be interrupted immediately, however, when inscrutable, quietly forceful tones emit a thing the barista might not expect to hear, unless he immediately parses the interloper's identity. "Heero Yuy, yes?" For various reasons, the identity draws a subtle half-smirk to the Lightning Count's features; even if nothing about their situation is precisely //funny//.
<Pose Tracker> Relena Peacecraft has posed.
Relena has a super hacker butler named Pagan. He's basically Alfred but for a teenage girl. It's kind of wild.
A car drives up to the cafe. A limo, really. And a door opens up--
--out steps out Relena wearing a long purple and lavender dress.
The doors close automatically behind her as she smiles at the drive. "Thank you Pagan." She says.
And then she just walks on in like she's any other customer, making her way up to the counter while looking at the menu.
"I wonder what kind of coffee would be good here? And what kind of light snack would best accompany it."
She's all gentle smiles right now. Her fondness for Heero hasn't faded even with her brief flirtations with shooting Treize in the face and her less brief flirtration with shooting Lady Une in the face.
Like much teenage flirtation, it didn't go anywhere, but she's here now, all smiles.
And then someone uses Heero's real--
...well it's not actually his real...
--it's his real name. Heero Yuy. Yep. Someone else is using it.
And he's... ... ... wearing some kind of weird mask?
Relena's blissful wistfulness is replaced with a look that clearly states: 'Who is this weirdo?'
<Pose Tracker> Heero Yuy has posed.
Heero's not exactly a complete stranger to weirdos entering his life -- after all, he's had an entire life of being moulded into a supersoldier by extremely suspect doctors with claws for arms, not to mention having been visited by giant Super AI ninja robots that can turn into dragons, and also Relena Peacecraft.
But the masked figure with the dark cloak has a particular... presence about him -- something that twigs something strangely familiar in him. He can't be certain he knows this man -- his identity is obscured, after all -- and yet...
Heero doesn't pull out a gun, or run.
It's strange, in just the six months since the Gundam exploded... he's managed to excise that habit. In a way, it's a sign of maturity -- the younger Heero would like to believe it's being ready at any point, but it's a sign of insecurity and fear as well. That he has to get the jump on anyone who comes close...
That he has to tear birthday party letters in front of everyone to get someone to stay away.
The masked figure identifies his name -- his codename. And then... Relena appears, which--
To be honest, he's not even surprised anymore at this point. The girl has a willpower stronger than that of those gathered at the Axis Shock, and Heero's convinced at this point that he could be sent into another dimension and Relena would somehow still find a way to appear in front of him.
"That's me," Heero answers softly, currently carrying the poise of a professional barista. And then, to the both of them:
"Can I take your order?"
Some things just take priority.
<Pose Tracker> Zechs Merquise has posed.
"Is that your new crusade?" The masked figure inquires without pre-judgement, but perhaps a tangible undertone of dubious disbelief. There's also a certain distance that creeps into the dulcet musing, as Zechs turns the impassive gaze of his masked cowl to consider the other interloper quietly; and likely for several moments longer than is purely polite or comfortable.
"... Why am I not surprised?" The murmur is rhetorical, and the only verbal indicator of the distraction and complication Relena represents... both by her own designs and stubborn will, and that of those around her. Perhaps closer than she even realizes.
The Lightning Count's blank gaze shifts back with a turn of his head to center once more on Heero, "You have misplaced your sword, Yuy." After a fashion. It may stretch metaphor to imagine a blade self-destructing, but the point is probably abundantly clear nonetheless.
"I would see it returned, and our aborted duel completed." Beat. Wry smirk. "... unless you have discovered your true purpose brewing beans and fleeing notice." Unless Zechs mis-reads the younger warrior, this seems unlikely; but the possibility hangs there a moment, nonetheless.
"I am called Zechs Merquise." An ace pilot and officer attached to G-Hound. To the Tallgeese Heero would likely recognize before the soldier's features; such speaks quiet volumes of the life they lead. The voice, however, is noteworthy. Familiar.
<Pose Tracker> Relena Peacecraft has posed.
Relena's eyes slant towards Zechs. "Excuse me?" She could tell that 'why am i not surprised?' was direct to her. She hasn't actually seen a picture of him before, thuogh she has heard the name before of course. Her brother...
Is this strange fellow?? Her eyes widen faintly in just shock at it all.
She takes in a breath, lets it out slowly with her eyes closed, then spins on a heel to face Heero. "What brew does the house suggest?"
by this point Heero prboably knows more about coffee than she does. She's usually into tea.
But it sounds like Zechs is inclined to drag Heero back into battle. She turns back aroun, placing her hands back and tensing on the counter.
She's about to retort that he has left the battlefield behind but Zechs preempts that by suggesting that if Heero's true calling is being a barrista. It's not perfect but it stalls her for just a moment. "Simply not knowing your purpose off the battlefield," She says. "Does not mean there isn't one to find."
Not that she would begrudge Heero either choice, but the binary is false.
The first time seeing him, she thinks.
And it's to ask someone out for a duel.
"...I'll have the Organic Premium Blend with cream." She says rather than wholly getting the house's opinion after all.
<Pose Tracker> Heero Yuy has posed.
So, this is the Lightning Count. Zechs Merquise... one of G-Hound's most decorated ace pilots. The mask evokes clear purpose, of course; one of both secrecy and mystery, but also of boldness -- the mask both creates an image while hiding one's inner self.
Heero spends a bit of time in reflection of this. Is his true purpose brewing beans? To be honest, it wouldn't be the worst life; he reflects on how, in that G-Hound Air Show, he explained that at least putting a smile on someone's face was... something, something far more constructive and creative than merely being bred for battle, living one's whole life for battle.
Yet...
It was clear as day, then --
"So you were the pilot in the white machine that day," Heero quietly reflects.
But this isn't just between him and Zechs -- there's some kind of recognition between him and Relena too. This is a surprising point for him, though Relena distracts him out of it by asking what he suggests.... but orders by herself in the end. He nods quietly.
"Sorry, but my reason for battle is over," Heero remarks as the grinder starts to whirr softly, and he fills the portafilter with the fine grind.
He has no more reason to fight -- on that day, Lady Une threatened the colonies with destruction, and in turn, the representative on their front surrendered... and he detonated the Gundam.
In the wake of that, the colonies issued a statement disavowing the Gundams, claiming them to be rogue agents. Abandoned by their homes... left on an Earth that does not welcome them.
"I don't think there's meaning in continuing a duel like that."
Yet why doesn't he believe that fully? Perhaps it's because while a part of him genuinely rejects the idea that he should only exist for battle, another part of him wishes to fight for what he believes is important; the colonies...
Can he really fight for a home that no longer wants him?
He turns, and slides Relena's drink over. "One premium blend, organic, cream."
<Pose Tracker> Zechs Merquise has posed.
It's easy to read Zechs' active disinterest in Relena as lack of care, rather than conscious distance; something all but essential for her to do what must be done. To remain unspattered by the blood on his own hands. And, perhaps, that on Heero's. "What becomes of a life's purpose with no one willing to bleed to ensure it?" the masked blonde asks her solemnly, deceptively simply.
"The Tallgeese." Zechs confirms, and gives name to the dangerous prototype he's sought to bend to his will; one of the few suits that has yet to even begin to express the potential within the Lightning Count. That is, assuming the unconventional machine does not kill him, first.
"Your reason for battle was to be misled into atrocity and forced to sacrifice your means to fight to preserve a semblance of honor and survival?" Yes, color Zechs unconvinced.
"Flags shift, Heero Yuy. Factions and the specificities of cause rise and fall, ascending to greatness... and falling to atrophy and corruption. Often in cyclical turn." It's a Problem. There's no doubt of that.
"You were used, your honor and dedication exploited to the ends of others; but has YOUR fight truly been won? Are you satisfied with the status quo and what it will now birth?" The Lightning Count asks the difficult questions without hesitation; but also keen awareness they have no particularly simple answer. There is, perhaps, a quiet and unusual overlap in their experiences, despite their /clearly/ delineated factional loyalties.
"What remains are the merits and shortcomings of those who fight. Those with ideals, with honor; and every would-be tyrant in turn. Did you join the fray because you were commanded to, or because you saw something worth fighting -for-?" It's an important distinction, at least to Zechs. The only way to justify what he does; what he HAS done. What he may yet do.
"We stand on a precipice, Yuy. None can claim certainty of what the future holds; only that it will always be born... in //fire//." The Lightning Count scarcely raises his voice, but the intense, projected clarity of his own idealistic passions rings clear, like a sudden, sharp wind across a placid, half-frozen lake.
<Pose Tracker> Relena Peacecraft has posed.
Relena Peacecraft stares at Zechs Merquise. Someone who certainly knows she's his sister biologically because SHE learned everything from Noin who, presumably, learned it from him. She would have been less offended by disinterest. She'd understand disinterest. It's not like they really grew up knowing each other. This is the first time she's ever seen him face to face. Might as well be a stranger.
But the conscious distance is harder for her to accept as anything other than an insult. Like she cant do the things in her life she needs to do with a family.
She turns her gaze from Zechs to focus on Heero and the drink she is sliding over. "Thank you." She says, lifting the cup up to her lips and--
A small sip. Just a small one as Zechs claims how Heero was used. The failures inherent in factional structure. She can't argue that bit. Zechs is rising a fire in her even without looking in her. She is not content.
But her power is that to sway hearts and minds. What power is in a gun? She could have shot them both, but she avoided striking their vitals. She refused to because it'd be akin to telling Treize that he is correct, that violence is what shapes the future, that the soldier's honor is the truest way to believe. That is what he believes, isn't it?
Relena takes another sip of the coffee to calm herself.
"Nobody is bound by their talent," Relena says. "Plenty of people bleed day in and day out for the right to brew a simple cup of coffee. Anyone can choose their reason to fight, or to not fight."
"What is your purpose for fighting, Lightning Count?" Relena asks. "Why do you fight on behalf of killers with no goal but war itself?"
<Pose Tracker> Heero Yuy has posed.
There's no more doubt in Heero's mind that this is the same man he fought; even though he didn't see his face, there's a similar intensity in the way he speaks as when he fights.
So, that machine's name is the Tallgeese... there was a similarity as well in it -- a similarity to the Gundams, which Heero wasn't expecting. The name 'Gundam' is one stained by blood in history at this point, from the very beginnings of the One Year War... theirs is but another page in that long and storied chapter.
He gets to the point, though, seeing through to the heart of the matter -- that Heero was misled, acting on bad intel, forced to sacrifice himself for the gains of a homeland who was simply done with him.
What a shabby reason for battle, indeed.
Much like Relena, a discontentment is rising in Heero as well, one he isn't even fully aware he had... no, perhaps one he's been hiding away from.
"When I awoke... I discovered that I was someone with no mission, no homeland, no purpose -- not even a name save the one I borrowed for the mission," Heero speaks quietly. "I thought that it was a cruel fate at first, and yet... it became a chance for me -- a chance to realise how much people say an ideal, perfect soldier is someone who never questions their orders or seeks to understand their place on the battlefield... and how shortsighted that thinking came in the end."
He glances towards Relena as he speaks. "And not only that... I've been watching someone fight her own battle these last few months." There's genuineness in those words -- someone who admires the strength Relena has cultivated for herself -- a fight that she's taking on for her own reason, not on the behalf of others.
He stops as Relena asks her question, because he's interested in the answer as well.
<Pose Tracker> Zechs Merquise has posed.
To Zechs' memory, it is not the first time they've met, face to face. He was a child himself when the Sanc Kingdom fell-- and faced with an impossible choice, alongside unfathomable trauma. Relena didn't have to see what happened, doesn't have to remember it. Rather than casting her aside, she was carefully placed; protected. Protected from the path her brother chose to walk; perhaps felt he had no choice BUT to walk.
Any passing of that blame has long since passed, however; Zechs is who he has decided to be. Who he feels he /has/ to be. "Ah, but you did not answer the question, Ms. Peacecraft."
The name hangs on his lips for just a moment. Little more than a memory, now; a totem associated with betrayal and outrage. A dream sundered and sullied... but far from extinguished. And so Zechs addresses his own query, "Even the most beautiful purpose can be burnt to cinder in moments by the violent urges of those willing to use their power to oppress; to control; to dictate."
For the moment, Relena seems to have his full attention; it's difficult NOT to try to justify himself to her. But equally important not to simply rant about things best kept concealed until their fruit has ripened. It's a line Zechs walks with the graceful precision of a tightrope performer. Behind his mask, his eyes are unfamiliar but kindred mirrors of hers, locked to the challenge yet presented only in placid white and resilient metal.
"When I awoke from my own nightmare, I was someone with no mission. No homeland. No purpose. Only a name I seized to find my own crusade." The Lightning Count paraphrases the younger pilot with precise intentionality; both for Relena's benefit, and for Heero's.
"I fight because no careful cultivation of a Better Way or Greater Good endures the malice of mankind-- and beyond-- without those with acumen who are willing to bloody their hands, to compromise their spirits and minds to stop those who are uncompromising and avaricious. If you believe my own purpose to be yoked to the darkness of ascendant powers, now... then you are not hearing me." But the Lightning Count chooses not to further explain those detailed steps. Flags rise and fall.
"Let me put this to you another way, Heero Yuy..." Only now does Zechs stop considering Relena, shift his attention away from his lost sister, from the tumult the entire affair rouses within him in turn, to her unlikely friend-- or crush? "Your weapon has been reforged. If you do not take it up, someone else will. Do you trust their honor more than your own, now that you have tasted the potential costs?"
<Pose Tracker> Relena Peacecraft has posed.
"I didn't answer it," Relena says coolly, "Because I reject the basic premise. How many wars were actually to preserve one's freedoms or was that just the propaganda used to drive support for base power grabs?"
No homeland. Sanc may not be the force it once was, but it still lives. Relena stares into Zechs's eyes. Shouldn't she reach out to this man and welcome him as family? That's what a Peacecraft would do, wouldn't they? Wouldn't HE know better than HER?
"Failing to match an ideal is not failure to seek it. The world is full of those with bloodied hands and the bloodiest of those hands scarcely need to raise their hands to drench their ledgers."
Can she not hear him? "Everyone says I am deaf to others, as if peace is something built in a first conversation, as if understanding can be found in a few sentences. Understanding is work and you, too, are welcome in the Sanc Kingdom if understanding is your desire."
That sure is a loaded statement. But ultimately she is distracted from pushing the matter further by Heero's words.
I've been watching someone fight her own battle these last few months.
Relena looks to Heero. She sips her coffee--
--then turns her head before her brother can see the faint blush forming. It's mild, but--
"Heero..." She says, fingers light on the ege of her coffee cup.
"Perhaps the road to my ideal requires compromise and stumbling, grasping hands but I believe our culture is malleable, not forever doomed to sink into darker and darker depths but for sacrifice."
<Pose Tracker> Heero Yuy has posed.
In this sense, Heero is a relative neophyte, a child who's just taken his first steps into truly understanding what living for oneself looks like. From the day he was born, he truly has had an unusual life, following in the footsteps of his assassin father... the father who would take the life of the more famous Heero Yuy, the pacifist and advocate for the colonies.
Currently, he feels as if he's trapped between two storms -- the storm that is Zechs, who burns with a belief that ideals falter in the face of a cruel reality, that bloodshed and violence are necessary to form the future. And the storm that is Relena, who rejects war as it's so often twisted into a benefit by those in power, that ideals and peace are something that must be worked at one step at a time, no matter how fragile...
...
They have truly cruel destinies, Heero thinks to himself.
Zechs speaks to a story that's uncannily similar to his -- that he had nothing but a name to wrest in his own crusade. "My own reason for fighting..." he finds himself whispering.
He has a longer way to go than he realises, but...
He stops, and pours the other half of that coffee that he'd prepared for Relena and offers a cup of the same blend to Zechs.
"You mentioned whether I'd found true purpose in brewing beans. And perhaps not coffee itself, but rather..." Heero pauses. "I realised I needed to understand life in order to understand how to fight to protect it. The life that you say you'd spill blood to protect from the avaricious. The life that Relena has been building for others, each little step along the way."
He sets some sugar and cream beside the cup, but leaves it up to the Lightning Count on how he'd like to take his coffee, if any. There's meaning in the cream Relena's added, and the current darkness within the cup in front of him as well.
What Zechs says in the end surprises him, but he manages to hide it well.
"... you rebuilt the Gundam?" Heero asks. It's an extremely bold move, perhaps one done underneath the notice of those higher up in G-Hound; he can't imagine there are that many people up there who'd take kindly to a symbol of colonial independence being rebuilt by their own resoruces.
He is silent for a moment longer.
"... very well," Heero finally concludes. "It's been six months since I climbed into a mobile suit. Much like how this cup of coffee was important to me... I do think I won't truly find my answer without returning to that seat."
He accepts, in the end. But it isn't a simple, blood-starved boy out for revenge who does this; it's someone who's only begun his journey of self-discovery.
<Pose Tracker> Zechs Merquise has posed.
"Too few." Zechs does readily agree with Relena's assessment of war. "Almost all of which then took on a life of their own, perpetuating rather than abating atrocity." Nonetheless, the Lightning Count's lips tense into a profound frown.
"Do not so readily discount the sacrifices of lives and solace, the blood shed by others to /allow/ those embers to burn, for someone worthy to stoke them." Zechs emphatically encourages her-- nearly //demands// of her.
"There is no place for someone like me in a place like the Sanc Kingdom; but that does not mean I disregard its value." Far, oh so very far from that. Galactic scale levels of distance.
Any building fervour is calmed by how Heero answers, and the lessons he asserts-- and so it is that the Lightning Count finds himself responding, first, with a respectful nod. "Well spoken." Zechs acknowledges. It gives the statuesque blonde pause-- has /he/ truly tasted that side of life? How long has it been?
Rather than illuminating the truth of the Wing Gundam's repairs and precisely how it was accomplished, Zechs reaches into the breast of his jacket and produces a simple card, blank save a set of coordinates. A set of very remote, very cold coordinates.
"I trust you can make it here." He muses, sliding the card to their unlikely barista. "And we will meet on the field as honorable warriors; not pawns in another's war. We shall, perhaps, find the truth of things thusly." And cut to the true natures of one another, lit by the clash of beam sabers. With that offering, Zechs gracefully rises from his seat, his gaze passing from Heero back to Relena, and lingering there yet another moment too long.
<Pose Tracker> Relena Peacecraft has posed.
The offer of a place in Sanc Kingdom for Zechs was more than just an offer of dialogue, it was an offer for her brother to return to his home--one he has, for all his distance, a stronger attachment than Relena. Perhaps one day she could grow to care for Sanc as if iit were her home but as it stands, it feels as much her cage as it does her kingdom.
Is that what she's doing? Underestimating the sacrifices of the mental health and lives of soldiers that are used as the timber for these wars? Perhaps that is what Treize wants? For people to understand the true value of a soldier?
Perhaps in understanding a true value of a soldier, those with true power would be less inclined to sacrifice them?
But at the end off the day it's hard not to take it as a personal rejection. "I see." She says. "I cannot force you to return there. Consider the offer open."
How can she show that she understands the meaning of those sacrificed at peace's altar? On war's?
She has another sip of coffee. Demands. So many demands of the world. So much weight on their shoulders and they do not simply expect her to carry it but to carry it harder and better than those who came before, than her father, than the people who created her and were assassinated long ago, better than her own brother. That's the expectation.
"I see." She says. That's all she says of what Zechs is encouraging her, demanding her to do, to be. Someone who can gather up the soldiers and killers and peacelovers and the innocent and reconcile them all even through the inevitability of conflict.
Heero accepts the duel. "I understand."
She finishes her coffee and sets the cup down. "..."
And then she says, "Do you understand life now, Heero?" She asks.
<Pose Tracker> Heero Yuy has posed.
The wars that've taken a life on their won, consuming countless in their wake...
Heero is but one product of that. The product of the grudge of an older generation who grieved at the loss of someone whose name he has taken... someone who, he can only imagine, Relena may very well grow up to be. And the stronger a star shines... the darker the shadow cast in those who look up to it with hope.
But even if it fails, as Relena says, it doesn't mean it wasn't worth doing.
Perhaps true courage is in choosing to do something without knowing if you even have a chance of making it reality... because to not do it truly means you've given up on it.
"I can," Heero nods to the question of whether he can make it there, as Zechs rises from his seat. "The truth..."
He catches the way the words subtly shift between Zechs and Relena. She cannot force him to return 'there'... to return to a home that, by all likelihood, resembles nothing that Zechs remembers, that Zechs wages a crusade for.
Relena asks a simple question of him.
"... a little more than before. But I'd call anyone who says they truly understand life a liar."
They're all works in progress, all of them. This much, he understands now.