2022-09-22: Oh, the emptiness isn't
- Log: Oh, the emptiness isn't
- Cast: Yuliana Dispersal, Jana Cektru
- Where: Moralia
- Date: 2022-09-22
- Summary: Jana comes across a fascinating new scientific phenomenon, who is entirely too happy to play with her right up until she unwittingly crosses a line. Yuliana resolves to destroy Dr. Cektru, who resolves to research everything she can on the REA's Captain Dispersal, respectively.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Moralia is fine place to make all sorts of deals -- and let's just say there's a lot of leg room under the table. If one were looking to maintain certain throughlines into the AEU, this would be an excellent place to start. A few lucrative contracts, and...
Not that Captain Yuliana Dispersal would ever engage in anything unlawful.
Anyway, right now, she's not engaging in anything! (Aside from being engaged; there's a ring on her left hand which she keeps on despite the questions.) Right now, she's munching on some pissaladiere on a paper plate, quite happily. It's a type of caramelised onion and anchovy flatbread peculiar to the region, and Yuliana is nothing if not constantly on the lookout for local delicacies to eat.
Sunglasses atop her head, her dark suit is marked by a bright and cheerful pink shawl, wrapped about her neck. She sits on a park bench in a lovely little park, watching a water fountain and the crowds pass by.
A few people in that crowd elect to take the long way around her -- and the horrible zone of silence at her edges, leading into oblivion.
Munch.
<Pose Tracker> Jana Cektru has posed.
Dr. Cektru pegged the sort of place Moralia was fairly quickly, and she doesn't like it at all. The small residential areas--the polite fictions that overlay everything here. Jana has seen more PMC advertisements today than she knew existed her, and few have given her a particularly positive impression.
...Nevertheless, the sort of person who would interfere in a world's developments may need soldiers to do so, and so Jana is investigating.
She's made a point of arranging a few deals for mobile suit parts and otherwise establishing herself as a customer and person involved with what's going on, and is not letting on her general disapproval in favor of a cool, professional sort of tone. And now she is walking along. She glances over, and appreciates th nice pink shawl worn by someone up there, and--
...Hm. The blank spot is weird, at first--until Jana steps into it, and everyone goes blank. She blinks, visibly, looking around with a frown as if expecting some form of attack. This places her a little ways' from Yuliana... and obviously impacted by her aura.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Line hooked and sunk.
Yuliana's smile splits to a knifehewn grin, for one terrible moment.
When she calls out to Jana, though, she doesn't look -- doesn't look, because there's no emotional information from her, no emotional information here at all -- vicious at all. No: her expression is, if anything, a little concerned, the way one might look seeing a stranger trip on the curb. "Oh! Are you lost?"
She reaches out, with her free hand, fingers curling.
"Come here," a gentle command, "it's all right." It isn't. She certainly makes it sound that way, though, reassuring and caring.
As if she's really concerned with her wellbeing.
<Pose Tracker> Jana Cektru has posed.
To look at her, Dr. Cektru is not threatening; she's in ordinary clothes, white and blue, in a fairly modern style. She seems to carry no weapons. She is not particularly imposing. ...But there is a troubled expression that suggests a problem--for someone else.
"No," Jana answers authoritatively as to the question of whether she is lost. She turns, and she has to use her eyes, which is somewhat disorienting, and sh looks a little disoriented--until she settles on Yuliana, and realizes...
"But you are." A pause. "There's nothing here... No, that's impossible. There is something. But it's blocked..."
Her eyes sharpen. "Who," what, "are you?"
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
One of them did have the sense to ask what Yuliana was, once.
Of course, then Shelby ran away.
What a shame.
Yuliana's head cants to the side, blinking in what looks to all the world like confusion as Jana insists she's lost. "Excuse me?" She asks, politely, and lets Jana finish. She smiles, sympathetically, a touch awkwardly. "Uh... are you sure you're okay?"
Yuliana looks around, at the park, the water feature, the people, as if to wordlessly remind Jana that there are very many things here. As if that's what she meant.
"Why don't you come have some pissaladiere, and we can sort this out?" She offers, kindly, lifting her paper plate of flatbread pieces towards Jana. "I'm Yuliana -- Yuliana Dispersal. I'm off-duty right now, but I'm a Captain, so I'm sure I can help you out. What's your name?"
<Pose Tracker> Jana Cektru has posed.
Give Jana some time. She might end up there. For now, without the instruments to more precisely identify what she is and isn't sensing, Jana only has guesswork to go on, and the uncomfortable feeling of limitation she experiences near Yuliana. But Yuliana is quicker on her composure than Jana is, and Jana realizes that after a moment.
"...Please, forgive my brusqueness," Dr. Cektru says a moment later, now that it's clear that Yuliana will not so easily spill her SECRETS as to just demand them. But that's fine.
"Thank you," she says, "But I have eaten." She does, however, come to sit down on the bench beside Yuliana, smiling more pleasantly after a moment. "I am Dr. Cektru, with STORAGE."
The smile fades as she considers her words; it's not that she's frowning, exactly. But Yuliana of all people will recognize the Default Scientist Look.
She considers her approach. Demanding answers got Yuliana to be nice to her. Perhaps this woman really is an innocent victim of... something. Perhaps she doesn't mean her silence unkindly. Perhaps...
Well, nothing for it.
"Captain Dispersal, were you aware that you're at the heart of a psychic deadzone?"
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
"Ah, a doctor! How wonderful. ... STORAGE, are you? An admirable pursuit." Yuliana nibbles on another piece of flatbread, herself.
She's also eaten, but there's no accounting for hunger.
And then Jana spits it out.
Yuliana, to her credit, does not, though she does pause in her snacking to look over at Jana, surprised. A beat of a pause, and she swallows. "A... what now?" She asks, sounding entirely baffled.
"I'm sorry, but how would something like that even work?" Yuliana presses, after a moment, frowning in concern. "D...do you want me to call your people to come get you? I think, uh -- I think you're a little confused, doctor."
With a sympathetic expression, she points out: "I'm not even one of those psychic soldiers, you know? Nothing was done to me. So why would there be anything odd like that going on here?"
<Pose Tracker> Jana Cektru has posed.
"Yes, our work is very important," she answers. And hunger, well--Jana likes food. That's not the same as hunger.
A pause, a sawllow, a bit of bafflement... Hmmm. Jana can't read Yuliana's intent; she realizes, in that moment, just how much she relies on that sense, now that she can't use it to confirm Yuliana's meaning. She presses, she apologizes, and... She looks concerned.
Jana frowns back. Is this woman serious?
"Hmm. So you say nothing was done to cause this phenonemon..." That's not exactly what she said. Jana misses the hitch for a moment, because she's busy ignoring the concern. "I am not confused; if you are unfamiliar with such phenomena it would make sense that you wouldn't be able to sense it yourself. But so far as I know, there is nothing natural in humanity that would explain such an effect..."
Hmm!
"So I suppose it may not be you, but instead something on your person, in that case. Regardless, the effect is stark. So far as I can tell I suppose there's no reason it should harm you, though. Captain Dispersal, was it?"
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Is she serious? Who could tell?
(Yuliana is seriously enjoying herself, and that surely counts.)
"Nothing at all," Yuliana assures her, gently.
She cants her head, as Jana supposes this is nothing natural, looking for all the world still quite baffled. A pause, and she blinks. "Ah? I'm not carrying anything strange on me, doctor," Yuliana insists, still a shade confused. She is, of course -- she replaced her green fold as soon as they could treat another set of crystals to keep production going strong.
That's hidden beneath her cheerful pink shawl, of course.
"But -- yes, Captain Dispersal," she confirms, gesturing with an open palm. "I'm with the REA." And while it might be a bad idea to just give her that for free, she'd be able to look it up easily enough anyway, and Yuliana just really wants to see her reaction here.
It's delightful. Look at her, trying to figure this out!
<Pose Tracker> Jana Cektru has posed.
While outright gaslighting Jana has its difficulties, the truth is that as regards Yuliana she can't trust her senses, one of which is completely failing to work in the first place around her. Oh, Jana is not for an instant fooled by the idea that this is a problem with her instead of a real phenomena--but sh can no longer guess at how much of it Yuliana knows and doesn't...
Which means she must assume she is more innocent than not, because ethics matter.
"The REA," Jana repeats. "I see, yes." She considers for another few moments. She doesn't know enough about the REA for that to have a significant meaning--which is itself significant, really.
"Well, that about exhausts the amount I can glean just by looking at you," Dr. Cektru says with a sigh. "But if you ever want to advance the understanding of psychic blockage phenomena, feel free to drop by my lab in Tokyo."
"It's interesting, if disturbing. No human reacts to psychic phenomena as you appear to, and yet here you are."
It is, of course, possible that Yuliana is just lying, and is some kind of weapon...
But Jana can't just pick her up off the street and experiment on her! That would be Wrong.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Does she see? Jana takes it in hand without any apparent recognition, which makes Yuliana wonder exactly what rock she's been living under. It's strange to meet someone who doesn't have (unfair and unfounded!) preconceptions about the REA.
Yuliana laughs, a little unsettled. "Your... lab, doctor? You're not proposing to -- experiment on me, I hope. I'm not one of those alien threats NERV has to slap four-point leather restraints on and inject with whatever it is you have out there!"
And, well, it's kind of interesting that Yuliana can immediately jump to the correct kind of restraint one tends to use in medical procedures, but that's probably fine.
"Really," she repeats herself, "there's nothing going on here, doctor. Nothing at all."
Which isn't entirely a lie.
<Pose Tracker> Jana Cektru has posed.
Well, she hasn't been under this rock, anyway.
Jana watches Yuliana and there is a part of her that is pleased that she's the one unsettled now, but as an evolved being she looks past that particular bit of spite in herself. "Oh, certainly no threat," Jana reassures(?) Yuliana. "No restraints would be necessary. Just a few simple tests; broadcast psychic phenomena towards you, see what happens, check a few different wavelengths of ephemeral energy... No injections required, probably."
She lets it trail off, reassuringly!
"You do say that a lot," she says. "I suppose if it's classified then asking more is pointless. Regardless, thank you for the kind offer of snack. ...You know, I think I might seek one out myself, where did you get it?"
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
"So you say," Yuliana still sounds a little suspicious of Jana's threat potential, "but I can't fathom what you'd hope to find, doctor. This phenomena you're proposing... how could something like that exist?"
She frowns, gesturing with a piece of flatbread. "If it were possible, don't you think someone would have described it already? It really doesn't seem likely I'm at the heart of it... I mean, I'd notice, right?" A little nervous -- like she's kind of afraid there's something she doesn't know.
It costs her nothing to position herself as sympathetic.
Yuliana sighs, her head dipping, with a shade of apology. "I just can't talk about something nonexistent with you, doctor. I'm sorry." Which, being entirely technical, isn't a denial that it's classified.
Why, it's basically the truth!
"But this -- it's from that little bakery up the road, on the corner there," she says, indicating her pissaladiere. With concern, she presses: "Are you sure you'll be all right to go get some? I can let someone know you're here..."
<Pose Tracker> Jana Cektru has posed.
"That's the wonder of science, isn't it?" Dr. Cektru counters. "We can find so much that seems not to be anything at all until we've found it!"
But the matter of whether it exists... "Oh, it clearly exists," Jana answers. "Much that is possible and known is simply undetermined or unnoticed; it is normal for science to find explanations for things we'd assumed other explanations for, or may not have even noticed."
"If you have no psychic ability yourself, you would indeed not notice its absence at all. Imagine, someone who had such an ability later changed such that they could never sense it again. How alone such a person would feel! No, I think it's best that you don't."
But that sigh, Jana smiles. "...Regardless, as you say. You are in no position to discuss the phenomena. I will let you be." A beat, and that bakery. The concern...
"Oh, I'll be fine," Dr. Cektru answers. "I am accustomed to being in places new to me. But thank you for your concern." SHe stands, and moves to go.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Yuliana was playing about -- but her mood changes, visibly, when Jana supposes that such a person would be so alone.
It is sharp and sudden and impossible to mask -- the HATRED -- all carried in the scowl of her brow and the widening of her eyes and the curl of her lips over grit, grit teeth. "You--!"
Yuliana sucks in a breath, and shakes her head, with a grimace. "You... really shouldn't posit such dreadful scenarios out of nowhere, doctor," she chastises her, finally, as if she were bothered by Jana saying something so grim.
"Oh, do take care." And Yuliana manages to convincingly feign investment in Jana having a safe trip, even as the thoughts no one can know paint an entirely different picture.
She'll destroy her for the impertinence, she thinks. Yes, that would be proper.
Imagine implying Yuliana was... she's not.
<Pose Tracker> Jana Cektru has posed.
That sudden change is startling, really. Jana pauses short, tilts her head to regard that hatred quizzically. Yuliana may hate it even more, for the simple curiousity in it, the sheer Doctor in her manner as she considers it. It would seem that her hypothetical scenario may not be so hypothetical...
Nothing happened. ...'Nothing' happened? Yes, that would make sense. But there are so many unanswered questions...
"Perhaps you're right. As I deal primarily with materials and kaiju, I can disturb people by mistake." She does not smile--she does not have quite that much dissembling in her--but she inclines her head. "Take care," she agrees, and then...
Well. First point of order will be researching everything she can find on 'Captain Yuliana Dispersal of the REA'...
No, second. The first will be to leave the area.