2022-06-18: A thousand dagger cuts and the singular greatsword swing
- Log: A thousand dagger cuts and the singular greatsword swing
- Cast: Shiho Hahnenfuss, Yuliana Dispersal
- Where: X Point
- Date: 2022-06-19
- Summary: The Bloody Valentine Conflict scores another battle. With no eyes on her, Captain Dispersal isn't nearly so nice -- but what is the measure of Shiho Hahnenfuss?
<Pose Tracker> Shiho Hahnenfuss has posed.
This isn't the assignment Shiho expected. Part of her was expecting to be dropped in Africa, like most of ZAFT; part of her was expecting the high-drama option of the OCU. X Point is... a novelty, and a weird one.
It made sense, certainly, when it was explained to her; the CGUE DEEP Arms needs testing under atmospheric conditions, X Point is a place with a lot of highly deniable conflict, and X Point always seems to have something to give to people who poke it a little bit.
Shiho... isn't crazy about it, but she's not really in a headspace to argue with the notion. If ZAFT wants her to look into the scars that Zeon and the Earth Federation carved in the Earth, she can do that. It's a task she's better suited to than most, with her technical skills.
"Log number three," Shiho says, popping open the terminal inside her cockpit. She's typing up the finer points; the audio recording is more notes for herself. "Have located extensive wreckage of final 0079-era rollout mobile weapon candidates... most blueprints now matter of public record. Finds with intact reactors or complete weapons noted... CGUE performing acceptably under atmospheric conditions."
The ratio of risk to reward here is miserable, she thinks to herself. She ought to find an excuse to return to one of their forward bases -- or call for pickup, but that's its own risk issue...
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Captain Yuliana Dispersal, on the other hand, entirely expects these assignments. She isn't always given cycles in the Conflict, given all the specialist work she has to handle -- but she does receive plenty of work responding to ZAFT's efforts closer to home.
(Strangely, she rarely responds to ZAFT's African assaults. Whether this is a deliberate sub rosa play to place pressure on the OAC for their own purposes -- well, ask no questions, be told no lies.)
The great tragedy of these assignments, of course, is...
"Oh my GOD this is SO BORING," Yuliana sags inside the cockpit of her green-painted Tiandong 3, a mighty scowl on her face. "No one's out here today? Seriously? It's X-Point!"
She drums her fingers against her clutch, discontent. "'Go blow off some steam,' they said. What, does the Major expect me to fight all these hunks of junk? But I can't take gear back from here, oh no, that would complicate the situation. Complicated, my extremely fine ass." Yuliana grouses, as she shifts the clutch to the left and down, pushing the driving-stick forward to advance her wanzer.
"Waste of my damn time. Can't believe I had to send Lettu to go lean over Lagunov instead... now that would have been a day out." Yuliana pauses, for a moment, before she keeps pressing forward. "... huh, wonder how she's doing?"
<Pose Tracker> Shiho Hahnenfuss has posed.
Shiho, ever the technician, notices even the smallest discrepancies on her sensor array first. (Well, that and she has a significant range and fidelity advantage over most Wanzers; the CGUE she uses is meant to provide long-distance area denial, after all, and to execute on that...)
She squints at her sensors for a moment, with a faint huff. "That's... I don't think that performance profile fits a junker, unless they're very lucky," she remarks to herself. "IFF isn't ZAFT, isn't Zeon..."
She has to ask herself, then: is this an occasion for violence?
... she's got to come back with something. Still -- she can give her target one chance to self-identify. Opening a comms channel, she transmits:
"This is a ZAFT experimental machine. If you're a Vulture, I can negotiate."
She declines to explain what will happen if the smaller machine is with the Federation, because if it is, well. They both know what comes next.
KTS: Shiho Hahnenfuss has deployed in YFX-200 CGUE DEEP Arms.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
"Oh, sweet deliverance!" Yuliana exclaims, with eager relief, rocking forward to grasp her own console in a hand as the channel opens. "I thought there was no one out here! Really, you've saved me..!" She turns a dial, to zero in on the direction of the signal with her own sensors; they're not nearly as good, but she, on the other hand, has been doing this a long time.
It might not be a visual channel, but her smile is downright audible. As is the way it widens, sharkish, thanks to that little puff of -- "heh."
Yuliana settles back, grasping her levers. "My dear, you misunderstand the situation entirely. I'm the REA's Minovsky's Woman, and if you want to negotiate, feel free to give me a convincing argument to let you live." As she speaks, she advances. She doesn't have Shiho's exact position -- but she can take a horribly educated guess.
It may well be an occasion for violence.
KTS: Yuliana Dispersal has deployed in Tiandong 3 Annihilation Custom.
KTS: Yuliana Dispersal has changed loadout.
<Pose Tracker> Shiho Hahnenfuss has posed.
There'd been a little conflict in Shiho's heart at the possibility this might be an OCU machine; they're not terribly far from the OCU, in the grand scheme of things.
And if she's being honest... which she usually can't quite muster, lately... Shiho has fond memories of her time in the OCU. She likes it there. Fujinomiya was a great place for a bright-eyed kid with a knack for the study of particle physics.
X Point might be a better place for a frustrated test pilot, though, especially with an REA machine on the field in front of her. "Don't screw with me," she says, her tone immediately aggressive.
Turning her comms back off, she starts, "Testing thermal energy cooling model version 0.7 under atmospheric conditions." Maybe being outside the void of space will make it a little easier to keep those guns cool, she thinks, as she takes the mounted cannons into their first redline --
-- and gets a disappointing little 'bloop!' of a blast from one cannon, then the other. Her expression flattens a bit. She takes no verbal notes, because the sum total of her notes would be 'this sucks, actually.'
KTS: Shiho Hahnenfuss has activated the Trick Spirit Command.
KTS: Shiho Hahnenfuss targets Yuliana Dispersal with JDP8-MSY0270 Directed Thermal Energy Cannon Alternating Fire!
KTS: Yuliana Dispersal charges into the attack!
KTS: Yuliana Dispersal fails to react to Shiho Hahnenfuss's JDP8-MSY0270 Directed Thermal Energy Cannon Alternating Fire, taking 4290 damage!
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Oh, the OCU is just grand. Yuliana has several dalliances going on with intelligence agents of the region who are trying to get to the bottom of her oceanic crimes. They're very good at their jobs, which is what makes it exciting!
(Of course, she leaves the worst spy-versus-spy activities to the actual spy in her team; one of the most important things about being Captain is knowing how to employ your human resources. Parminder wouldn't know what to do if she dropped him into a mobile suit, but he's hardly useless.)
"Oh, I haven't even begun!" Yuliana chirps, in cheerful rejoinder, but she doesn't bother re-opening communications after Shiho leaves the conversation.
It's herself and her hungering void which hear: "Come on, then!" The readings come in --
-- and the Annihilation Custom (what a heroic name!) charges right through the cannon blast. The medium glossing the wanzer seems to absorb the heat very well, though the beams scour the metal decently enough.
"HAH!" Yuliana crows, as finds the CGUE based on its fire. Charging, she throws her Cleave Axe forward -- and as it happens, she's stuck a chain on the end. It lashes out, lashes forward, and shortly the Tiandong 3 follows.
It performs -- unfairly, compared to the Tiandong 3s the REA usually fields. This sort of fine-tuning must mean someone is seeing to the unit personally; whoever this Minovsky's Woman is, she must have an engineer behind her.
(And, well, that's true these days, but before she inherited an engineer, she was her mechanic.)
KTS: Yuliana Dispersal has activated the Alert Spirit Command.
KTS: Yuliana Dispersal has activated the Strike Spirit Command.
KTS: Yuliana Dispersal targets Shiho Hahnenfuss with MULS-P Hookshot Entangle!
KTS: Yuliana Dispersal anchors Shiho Hahnenfuss, forcing her into close range.
KTS: Shiho Hahnenfuss fails to react to Yuliana Dispersal's MULS-P Hookshot Entangle, taking 3600 damage!
KTS: Yuliana Dispersal has engaged Shiho Hahnenfuss
<Pose Tracker> Shiho Hahnenfuss has posed.
"What the hell?!" Shiho knows, broadly, how wanzers operate; ZAFT has plenty of them and she's worked on them once or twice. This isn't a level of pull a wanzer ought to be able to exert; she and Yuliana end up yanked into each other's close arcs, and the heavy-for-its-size Tiandong actually manages some real pull on the comparatively light CGUE.
This presents several problems, not the least of which is: how does Shiho even maneuver against something this small but this powerful? "Nngh -- I'm switching to a known better weapon," Shiho mutters, deciding that as things are she needs to keep the cannons in reserve for one big, solid blast that wastes a ton of coolant.
Switching to her sidearm, Shiho gives the Wanzer a decidedly more conventional payload to deal with: bullets. She needs to risk ricochets into her own unit to fire at this close, but... well, the beam weapons are off limits and the sword is actually too big to wield effectively at this close. It's that or a pommel strike with the sword, and she's picked her preference.
KTS: Shiho Hahnenfuss has activated the Trick Spirit Command.
KTS: Shiho Hahnenfuss targets Yuliana Dispersal with MMI-M7S 76mm Machine Gun Burst!
<Pose Tracker> Shiho Hahnenfuss has posed.
"What the hell?!" Shiho knows, broadly, how wanzers operate; ZAFT has plenty of them and she's worked on them once or twice. This isn't a level of pull a wanzer ought to be able to exert; she and Yuliana end up yanked into each other's close arcs, and the heavy-for-its-size Tiandong actually manages some real pull on the comparatively light CGUE.
This presents several problems, not the least of which is: how does Shiho even maneuver against something this small but this powerful? "Nngh -- I'm switching to a known better weapon," Shiho mutters, deciding that as things are she needs to keep the cannons in reserve for one big, solid blast that wastes a ton of coolant.
Switching to her sidearm, Shiho gives the Wanzer a decidedly more conventional payload to deal with: bullets. She needs to risk ricochets into her own unit to fire at this close, but... well, the beam weapons are off limits and the sword is actually too big to wield effectively at this close. It's that or a pommel strike with the sword, and she's picked her preference.
KTS: Shiho Hahnenfuss has activated the Trick Spirit Command.
KTS: Shiho Hahnenfuss targets Yuliana Dispersal with MMI-M7S 76mm Machine Gun Burst!
KTS: Yuliana Dispersal has activated the Wall Spirit Command.
KTS: [Mirage] Yuliana Dispersal's Avoid20 activates, and she slips into a mirage.
KTS: Yuliana Dispersal blocks Shiho Hahnenfuss's MMI-M7S 76mm Machine Gun Burst, taking 0 damage!
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
"Hahahaha --" Yuliana laughs, as she flicks a switch to engage the vibration resonators she's installed to help dissipate force across her frame. But it's another of the custom systems she's installed that save her, here -- the legs of her wanzer activate their automatic threat detection and kick off the shins of the CGUE, soaring above it.
She snaps the chain to pull herself back in -- perched right astride its lightweight chest. The Annihilation Custom is -- not a light machine, by contrast. It's fast, but it needs the weight it has to do just this -- grasping onto larger mechs, without any fear of reprisal.
The communication channel opens, again. "I congratulate you on your efforts to fight in such close quarters," Yuliana says, with all the smooth acid of someone whose accolades hide a knife. "But are you really designed for such a thing? Like this --"
And the Tiandong 3 brings its Heavy Flamer up --
And stabs it IN --
There's a bayonet attached to it. This woman has modified her flamethrower for melee use.
Flame pours from the flamer, and the semi-transparent medium on the wanzer lights up. It may become clear, in this moment, that it was never designed to protect against Shiho's attacks. Rather, that heat defence --
This machine is designed to withstand itself.
KTS: Yuliana Dispersal has activated the Strike Spirit Command.
KTS: Yuliana Dispersal targets Shiho Hahnenfuss with Berserker Flame!
KTS: Yuliana Dispersal rattles Shiho Hahnenfuss, making her next maneuvers more difficult.
KTS: Shiho Hahnenfuss fails to react to Yuliana Dispersal's Berserker Flame, taking 3300 damage!
KTS: Yuliana Dispersal has engaged Shiho Hahnenfuss
KTS: Shiho Hahnenfuss has activated the Dash Spirit Command and has disengaged.
<Pose Tracker> Shiho Hahnenfuss has posed.
Yuliana's proximity doesn't put Shiho particularly off her guard; she's never been the type of person who has inherently stellar intuition, never the type of person to read the battlefield beyond being, well, a battlefield.
This protects her a little bit from Yuliana. On the other hand, when her machine -- already something that struggles to stay cool -- gets subjected to a lot of heat, things get... messy, regardless. She has to split her attention between protecting her overall integrity and protecting her extremely expensive and extremely overdesigned weapon system, and she takes protecting her extremely expensive and extremely overdesigned weapon system... even if it means it's her that could use some coolant, at that point.
"Nngh..." she starts, taking the CGUE back away from the Tiandong and moving toward one of the wrecks she surveyed earlier. Her style is... uniquely unsuited to duels -- the DEEP Arms is really more of an anti-squadron weapon platform.
"How am I having this much trouble with this?" she hisses at herself before opening comms again. "I'm surprised the REA can even afford that much heat-resistant coating," she says, before deciding that she needs to buy herself time and space to either cool off her machine or cool her head.
The machine gun is a no-go, and the thermal energy cannons need to wait... so despite having gotten away, she draws the machine's laser sword. It's usually for large targets rather than small ones, but... she can make an exception this once. Giving the hefty blade a whirl, she boosts back in, bringing it down toward the much smaller machine with a ruthless, fast slice.
KTS: Shiho Hahnenfuss has activated the Trick Spirit Command.
KTS: Shiho Hahnenfuss targets Yuliana Dispersal with NOL-Y941 Heavy Laser Sword Carve!
KTS: Shiho Hahnenfuss rattles Yuliana Dispersal, making her next maneuvers more difficult.
KTS: Yuliana Dispersal blocks Shiho Hahnenfuss's NOL-Y941 Heavy Laser Sword Carve, taking 3220 damage!
KTS: Your unit's HP stands at 8750
KTS: Shiho Hahnenfuss has engaged Yuliana Dispersal
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
The CGUE's motions force disengagement from the Tiandong, and it falls back to earth with a distressingly heavy THUD. Yuliana grins, as she pulls back her lever, to straighten her wanzer out again.
She wants to hide! Adorable!
"Oho?" Her voice comes through the comms, all rising-tone curiosity, as Shiho launches that jab. It's interest which falls to cruelty, as she continues speaking. "My, my. Your time in space has warped your idea of scarcity, hasn't it? Oh, no one could blame you for thinking we've a dearth of resources for those with sufficient skill..."
She licks her lips, all split to a savage grin. "... when your belly is so empty."
There's no one here to witness her death, and that means there's no reason for Yuliana to pretend to be any kinder than she is. All her pretty words about capturing the enemy and bringing them to lawful justice have fled far from this place, as she twists the knife.
The CGUE launches forward, with that massive blade -- and the Tiandong 3 doesn't bother to run. Rather, it lifts the broad side of its Cleave Axe up, to meet the blow; the force of the laser pushes the wanzer back, and her sensors report protest from her arm parts, given such mistreatment.
"So!" Yuliana chirps, chipper, as Shiho presses that violence into her. "An experimental machine, is it? Goodness, it would be terrible if something were to disrupt all those delicate little systems you're managing in there." She flicks a series of switches, slides a lever forward -- and the chaff launcher on her shoulder moves to target the CGUE, firing with no further warning.
Is THAT why they call her Minovsky's Woman...?
(Without heightened intuition, it's the best available guess.)
KTS: Yuliana Dispersal has activated the Daunt Spirit Command targeting Shiho Hahnenfuss
KTS: Yuliana Dispersal targets Shiho Hahnenfuss with Point Blank Minovsky Particle Chaff Release!
KTS: Yuliana Dispersal rattles Shiho Hahnenfuss, making her next maneuvers more difficult.
KTS: Shiho Hahnenfuss parries Yuliana Dispersal's Point Blank Minovsky Particle Chaff Release, taking 195 damage!
KTS: Yuliana Dispersal repulses Shiho Hahnenfuss, forcing her to disengage.
<Pose Tracker> Shiho Hahnenfuss has posed.
"... Disgusting!" Righteous anger is something Shiho's wanted to feel for a while -- and Yuliana provides just such an occasion. She expects a close-quarters, disruptive attack. "You'd taunt us over something like that?!"
Shiho quickly... turns off the leading blade of her laser sword; a moment later, she pulses it right back on. What she's looking for isn't the blade itself, but that split-second pulse of it starting up, before the focusing rings all lock into place, does a lot to heat up those particles and disrupt their usual lattice formation. She does have to cede a little ground to pull it off, but that might be to her benefit later.
She has to keep going. Letting this Earth Federation woman win feels unthinkable, at this point. The amount of mental effort Yuliana is forcing out of her is a little bit overwhelming, though -- her body sags with a very physical exhaustion, and while she knows what she needs to do to turn this around...
... well, it's actually taxing. She has to think a lot about her next move.
... the best thing for her now, in terms of getting good data, is just taking the cannons to their absolute limit and learning from the experience. Diverting all power to the cooling system, Shiho brings the CGUE to a full stop; both of those cannon swivels point straight forward, and she sprays superheated particles in...
... really, just about everywhere surrounding the Tiandong, let alone the Tiandong itself. It's a singularly wasteful technique -- perhaps itself an answer to the question of scarcity Yuliana's posed.
KTS: Shiho Hahnenfuss has activated the Trick Spirit Command.
KTS: Shiho Hahnenfuss has activated the Dash Spirit Command and has gained proficiency bonus.
KTS: Shiho Hahnenfuss has activated the Focus Spirit Command.
KTS: Shiho Hahnenfuss has activated the Valor Spirit Command.
KTS: Shiho Hahnenfuss targets Yuliana Dispersal with Touch Me Not!
KTS: Yuliana Dispersal fails to evade Shiho Hahnenfuss's Touch Me Not, taking 8660 damage!
KTS: Shiho Hahnenfuss roots her unit, coming to a standstill and leaving her vulnerable.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
"Without hesitation," Yuliana replies, unapologetic. "Because it's thanks to scum like you that a twelve-year-old brat had to cling to a stripped tree as those filthy waters raged. Was destroying Sydney worth it, I wonder..? As far as I'm concerned, you can all WASTE AWAY!"
Her voice lifts in anger, at the end of her incisive speech -- perhaps she's more invested in this than she lets on.
She flicks off her communications, for a moment, so she can register the shift in her mood: "Shit." The Tiandong is the one which backs away from its own chaff release -- so that it can try and send a message out, to the ship due to fetch it.
"Rond... ne, come i-- deteriorating, this cou... et messy. Calli... etrival. Say a...in, calling retrieval." She frowns, as she watches the complaints of her communication system, trying to transmit the message through the interference.
"Arrrrgh," Yuliana grouses, as she lifts a foot from her pedal to kick her console. "Why do I DO THINGS?!"
Unfortunately, while she was worrying about her own mental state -- the CGUE is still an experimental model. And this, tragically, means it has only the best toys.
The Annihilation Custom is a mobile wanzer, but the sheer AMOUNT of those particles is simply impossible to evade. It's a manual system, which means Yuliana's clutch control is handling all those movements -- and Yuliana is a Natural, more or less, with a Natural's reaction speed and capacity. A veteran Natural, to be sure, but --
"Oh FUCK ME!" Yuliana yelps, as she's thrown violently against her safety restraints. Her Heavy Flamer, beside her, unhelpfully explodes as it's blasted by some of those supercharged particles -- because flamer fuel, as it happens, is flammable by design. That entire arm is useless; there are several deep holes scored in the wanzer's thick armor, leaking oil and mechanical lubricant.
Her cockpit is lit up with a cacophony of warning lights, flashing red and yellow. EMERGENCY is written on several of the screens. "Rrrgh!" Yuliana snarls, as she soundly brings her fist down on one of them. Unfortunately, Yuliana knows herself, and the glass has long since been replaced with something harder to shatter. "Shut the hell up!"
Her wanzer doesn't have any sort of AI which could understand the command, of course. Yuliana is just quite angry.
The communication channel flicks on, again.
"Oh, you should've just KILLED ME!" Minovsky's Woman is well and truly rattled, after that -- but the smoking wreck of the wanzer somehow forces itself forward anyway, its one functional arm lifting its Cleave Axe as it leaps up to bring it down, right into the CGUE's midsection.
"HERE, LET ME SHOW YOU HOW IT'S DONE--!"
KTS: Yuliana Dispersal has activated the Valor Spirit Command.
KTS: Yuliana Dispersal targets Shiho Hahnenfuss with MULS-P Cleave Axe Revenge Strike!
KTS: Shiho Hahnenfuss fails to react to Yuliana Dispersal's MULS-P Cleave Axe Revenge Strike, taking 5670 damage!
KTS: Yuliana Dispersal has engaged Shiho Hahnenfuss
KTS: Yuliana Dispersal roots her unit, coming to a standstill and leaving her vulnerable.
<Pose Tracker> Shiho Hahnenfuss has posed.
Shiho does a quick round of math as Yuliana screams at her. In the meanwhile, she switches over to laser comms -- best to have a more direct line so she can be sure she's getting through, at this close distance. "Don't lump me in with Zeon's garbage," she replies, a little bitterly. "I would've been happy to stay in the OCU if the Man Hunters hadn't insisted on showing up and ruining my internship."
Comms closed again. The axe comes up, and Yuliana strikes; she gets all of it, too, lopping off the CGUE's arm -- no mean feat for the smaller unit. Revenge indeed -- she gives exactly what she gets.
Shiho looks at the sparking mess before her, considering whether it's worth it to press her assault. The sunlight between 'what the CGUE has' and 'nothing' is small indeed... but it's still got something, at least. It's too close to use the sword (and while the CGUE can one-hand it, Shiho prefers finer control against a smaller target), and the cannons are done for.
She's got a machine gun, though!
It's that that she uses, then, because in a practical sense it's all she's really got. "Give up!" she demands, with a last burst of machine gun fire; her lips turn down in a scowl. Sure, she's going to bring back some salvage if she can drive this woman off, and she's got plenty of good data... but was that worth the damage Yuliana's done to the DEEP Arms?
For that matter, was that worth the damage Yuliana's done to Shiho's mood?
KTS: Shiho Hahnenfuss targets Yuliana Dispersal with MMI-M7S 76mm Machine Gun Burst!
KTS: Yuliana Dispersal rushes into the attack!
KTS: Yuliana Dispersal fails to react to Shiho Hahnenfuss's MMI-M7S 76mm Machine Gun Burst, taking 3600 damage!
KTS: Yuliana Dispersal has been defeated!
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
"Lie with dogs and get fleas! You're preparing their armaments -- I'll paint you with the same damn brush!"
So that's a no on not lumping her in with garbage, then. Interesting, perhaps, the way Yuliana groups all of space together.
The wanzer is about finished -- even with all its modifications, it is still, at its core, a Tiandong 3, and that model is hardly something which can stand up to ZAFT's cutting edge.
But when Shiho demands she give up, Yuliana screams. She does not scream any word, no particular invective -- no, her bloodcurdling holler is wordless and enraged. Just what kind of pilots does the REA employ, that they would charge into death like this..? Perhaps it's not difficult to imagine this woman participating in sheer wave tactics, if she were just a little less celebrated.
The machine gun burst, of course, blasts through -- and thanks to all those holes in its armor, the bullets score into the wanzer's key targeting systems. "If you think I won't input manual overrides -- you think this is the first time someone's hit my onboards -- I'll rip you out of that fancy machine --"
Before Yuliana can learn how empty her threats are, though, a cruiser descends from the sky. The Salamis Kai-class booms out in a wide transmission: "Rondo One, on site. Geez, what a pain..." The voice -- male and quite bored -- sighs. "You sure didn't make it easy to lock onto your location. Anyway, enemy pilot -- whoever you are -- I'm just here to pick to pick up my idiot Captain before she kills herself. I mean, weapons hot, but I don't really feel like it. Do you?"
"Shut the hell up, Letda!" Minovsky's Woman snaps, as the wanzer looks up to the cruiser. "Anyway, you're late!"
"Sure, sure," 'Letda' says, with vague annoyance, as he sends down a wire. "Major's on my side, so I win this one. We've got new orders."
"Ugh... fine!" Yuliana grabs that wire with the one functional arm of her wanzer, feet planting on the footrests. "Take your data and go, spacenoid wretch!" How can she talk like that when she's this annihilated..?
Maybe THAT'S why it's called the Annihilation Custom.
So long as the CGUE doesn't stop them, the Salamis Kai is going to ferry that wrecked wanzer up to its hangar -- and fly away, leaving her alone with her salvage.
<Pose Tracker> Shiho Hahnenfuss has posed.
Shiho considers giving the Salamis arriving for Minovsky's Woman what we might call a Loum hello.
She doesn't. The ship-cutting sword would probably be perfect for it... in space. Here, she'd have to make an obvious, telegraphed leap for the bridge -- at which point she'd probably end up dead.
The anger at the Federation hasn't gotten that bad. "I pity you having to keep that woman on a leash," she replies to 'Rondo One,' before starting to pull back. "I got what I came for, in any case." Hopefully this is the only time the two of them meet; Shiho... isn't sure she likes who talking to a person like Minovsky's Woman turns her into. Explaining that to someone would take words she just doesn't have, though; for the moment, all she really knows is that -- even having successfully beaten on someone insistent on making herself the avatar of her frustrations -- she feels a little hollow about it.
Even so... she has good performance data and a fairly robust list of specific wrecks to sort through in X Point, which is more than a lot of missions get. She boosts away, leaving the Tiandong to its handlers, and prepares a detailed map of her findings once she's confident enough to go on autopilot.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
"Tch..!" Minovsky's Woman's radio may well pick up that annoyed grunt, as she's whisked away. Perhaps she's scornful of the CGUE pilot's pity.
Once she gets up into the hangar -- prying herself out of the cockpit, and she has to play merry hell with the manual release to even do that -- Yuliana storms off into crew quarters, shedding her battered helmet as she goes. She drops it in the hall. Someone else can deal with it; there are always a few mooks running around Rondo One, because Parminder can hardly handle everything on a cruiser himself.
She slouches against the nearest horizontal surface, and digs through the pocket of her uniform until she finds the bottle of pills she's looking for. She tips them into her hand, and swallows them, dry, a deep scowl on her face.
"Keep me on a leash, she says... as if I'm just some..." Her fingers tighten, around the bottle; her hand lashes out, as if to throw them, but she can't quite bring herself to release her grip.
She puts it back in her pocket.
"So what?" Yuliana demands, of herself and the void torn around her. "So what if I can be harnessed? After all... my strength has always been in who I grant this power to."
... even so, it bothers her.
She's even more bothered when she needs to borrow a stock-standard Tiandong 3 for their next mission, all thanks to her own berserkergang.