2022-12-04: How Do You 'Save' Someone?
- Cast: Ruri Hoshino, Alouette Pommier
- Where: GGG Orbit Base - Orbit Cafe
- Date: U.C. 0096 12 04
- Summary: Alouette invites Ruri to Orbit Base. They discuss what it means to save a number of people who do not want to be.
<Pose Tracker> Alouette Pommier has posed.
Triple Zero isn't just been a problem for GGG - a force hellbent on being the harbinger of the end of a universe tend to make their attacks as widespread and destructive as possible. The Nadesico crew has seen combat with the odd orange energy a number of times, particularly during Gridman Sigma's assault on the MAGI. With the Ruin Apostles only making even more frequent moves, the Nadesico's system operator has been invited to Orbit Base.
When Ruri arrives, a rather tall, very curly-haired figure arrives to greet her. "I'm glad you could make it, Miss Hoshino," she bows, AEU-style. "I'm Alouette Pommier, 3G's Mobile Operator. Oh, and I do a little programming on the side." Understatement of the century!
GGG's own Orbit Cafe is nearby and Alouette glances over and back at Ruri. "Um.. we can sit over there and get something to drink if you'd like," For a meeting, it's rather informal, but even among all their technological rituals, 3G prefers to keep some things simple. "I'll do my best to explain everything once you're ready.. but before then feel free to ask any questions." She smiles, a little shyly - Kaworu said he thought they would get along, but she still wants to make a decent impression.
"Oh and if I may ask, how is Omoikane? We spoke during the MAGI battle, if only briefly. Mr. Nagisa said he's your friend." Looking deep in thought for a moment, she smiles. To a lot of people, Omoikane might be a regular AI. But to someone in GGG, it's different. "I find it easy to get along with Super AI too, you see."
<Pose Tracker> Ruri Hoshino has posed.
The Nadesico's systems operator is rather a popular girl, of late! But an invitation to Orbit Base is an excellent business opportunity, as Mr. Prospector was happy to point out, and so Ruri is here.
At thirteen years old, she's still too short for Nergal's standard uniforms, so hers is custom-fit -- it's the same style of operational uniform as anyone on the bridge, though, with the same yellow and white and black. The same metal shoes, too, though Ruri's don't have heels, and they click against the floor of the base as the diminutive fairy steps out to meet Alouette.
She does not smile when she sees her.
"Thank you for the invitation," she says, instead, mild and polite; she bows in the Japanese style, but she still bows. "My name is Ruri Hoshino. All right." She moves to the cafe, and does not, immediately, ask, hopping up onto the seat with both hands to either side of her to brace her upwards.
The shadow of surprise crosses over her face to hear Alouette speak of Omoikane -- and then her expression falls back to neutrality. "I see... so Kaworu-san trusts you," Ruri says, first. "Yes. Omoikane is my best friend. He's still stressed, but he's doing very well, all things considered."
Ruri pauses, for a moment, and then takes advantage of Alouette's offer to ask: "Why did you call me here?" A brief pause, and she explains, staring to Alouette with those impossibly gold eyes: "Logically, if GGG wanted to share information with the Nadesico, you would want to speak to our Captain. If you're speaking to me instead, there must be a specific reason."
<Pose Tracker> Alouette Pommier has posed.
Alouette isn't too bothered by Ruri's unsmiling, distant politeness. She simply takes a seat across from the shorter girl, her gaze unchanging and focused.
"He taught me how to play the piano," Alouette states, when Ruri touches on the mention of Kaworu. "I'm not terribly certain what he thinks of me..." she admits. "But I think he's kind."
"It's hard not to be stressed lately.. but it's good that he's doing well," she nods, at Ruri's response.
"You are the Nadesico's system operator," Alouette answers, perhaps a bit vaguely. "I thought it might be easier to talk to someone like you than the Captain." Not only the similarities in occupation and experience - a wildcard personality like Captain Misumaru might have better luck with Chief Akamatsu. "There's also something I have to ask you, but it can wait." Alouette doesn't like lying. She doesn't want to use this meeting as coercion for information. "But if that answers your question... let's begin."
She gives the standard 3G spiel about Triple Zero - about Jupiter, The Power found within it, and the Braves who courageously expedited it 5 years prior. She simplifies it because Ruri is a very smart girl, who she's sure can make the connections on her own. "In short, we're currently fighting a desperate battle against our own allies - human and AI. It's not their fault.. and we would like to do whatever we can to return them to themselves." Her sharp expression softens just a bit. "I knew most of them myself when I was little, so the your help in the past battles means a lot to me." It's hard to separate the battles against the Ruin Apostles with those emotions that made her give up - even if she has since steeled her resolve.
Next is the harder part, opening up to asking a question of her own. "You don't have to answer this," she reminds her. "So I can help someone I used to consider my friend, I was wondering..."
"What do you know about Alexis Kerib?"
<Pose Tracker> Ruri Hoshino has posed.
"So it's easier to talk to me," Ruri concludes, when Alouette tells her why she asked for her specifically. "Since we're both teenagers, I suppose that makes sense." Ruri is Officially A Teenager now! She's very proud about it. She doesn't look proud, though; her neutrality is as stoic as ever.
(Never mind that Alouette looks like she might be an old enough teenager to be closer to Yurika's age than hers. This is not about that.)
She listens to the spiel without looking away. She is moved, certainly, in the vast ice sheet below the surface of her face; but the tip of the iceberg, her flat expression, rarely shifts. There are a great many intellectual connections she makes here -- but perhaps more importantly, more core than any of her logic, is the emotional realisation that Alouette is fighting against her friends.
Fighting to save her friends.
"If you can help someone, you should help them, I think." Ruri's own ethics are remarkably simple -- she is, after all, only just a teenager. "I don't want the world to end, but I don't think it's right to kill them just because it would be easier, either." Not that they could kill them so easily, with the power of Dawn running through their veins, but Ruri still thinks it's wrong. "It would be better if we could save them all."
Ruri hasn't always been able to do that.
Anyway.
She inclines her head, considering Alouette's next question. "I'll answer you," she says, and the words are a little more delicate -- which might only be notable in the contrast, because she doesn't sound that much more unsettled. This doesn't mean she does not feel unsettled. She's... subtle. "It's just a complicated question."
Ruri folds her hands, neatly, on the table. Underneath, her legs kick; it's easy for them to miss the ground. She's four feet nothing, after all. "Mr. Kerib came to me one day to warn me about Oath Over Omega. He was pretty weird, and didn't know how to talk to people, but... he was nice to me." There's the shadow of a frown, on her face, as she pauses for a moment. "Omoikane didn't like him, but I wanted him to approve of me, I guess. He gave me a lot of attention... even though I was always coming behind the girl he was taking care of. Akane Shinjo," Ruri supplies, past keeping his secrets.
She looks down, and adds, those gold eyes shadowed for a moment: "He saved my life, once." She's still grateful. It was... frightening.
"But one day I met another girl who was getting attention from him, Riika Sheder, and she was in a lot of trouble because she'd attacked a nuclear storage facility. So I told on Mr. Kerib, even though I'd been keeping our meetings a secret, because I thought it wasn't fair if she got blamed for that all on her own. The Captain said I couldn't trust him... logically speaking, she's right."
Ruri curls one finger over another, lips thinning as they press against each other. "The last time I spoke to him was about a month ago. I tried to ask him about Ms. Shinjo, but... I didn't really get anywhere. We played word games for a while, though... that was nice." There's another little frown, on Ruri's face, as she looks down at the table.
"He's probably a dangerous person," she concludes, but even now, she's a little conflicted about that.
<Pose Tracker> Alouette Pommier has posed.
"Yes," Alouette answers, when Ruri makes the connection that they're both teenagers. "I'm the youngest member of 3G. I don't get to speak to very many people my age, especially not with similar interests and skills as me. I imagine it's similar with you and Nergal." When Alouette thinks of Nergal, she thinks of oddballs who don't fit in anywhere else - much like 3G, really. Ruri might be the oddest of them all, but she's only thirteen. (Alouette, similarly, will probably be proud to tell you she's turning 16 in a few weeks. It's a big year!)
Alouette listens carefully as Ruri sorts out her own feelings and logic about Triple Zero. "You're right, Miss Hoshino. They're all very kind.. they don't deserve to die. It's a good thing we have purification on our side, even if we have to fight our hardest to get to that point." She doesn't even attempt to imagine a world where purification is not possible - it's just too cruel. "So we'll get them back.. no matter what."
Alouette notices Ruri's subtle shift in tone - and so too does her own. She's grown confident in matters regarding the Ruin Apostles - having awoken from the dream where she gave up on fighting them. But for all she knows about Tsutsujidai and Akane, Alexis is a very closed book. He has never once appeared to her.
She listens intently as explains what Alexis is like - how she came to know him. So he's nice and he saved her life - that makes sense, it explains how Akane came to rely on him. Perhaps it also explains why he never appeared to Alouette, a girl who no longer needs saving. And most interestingly, he's terrified of Triple Zero.
"Akane Shinjo... that's the person I was asking for. Because Alexis Kerib has trapped her in a dream." After what she went through with Bujack, it's very easy to compare it to a dream. Akane was the only one who never got to wake up from it. "So he saved you, gave you attention, and then..." He got bored? That explains a lot about how he ticks..
Ruri also mentions Riika Sheder - this part Alouette knew because Akane marked it on the chart. "Mm.. I can't really blame Miss Sheder, either." Alouette's political opinions on ZAFT have a lot of nuance to them, but she generally sympathizes with its individual soldiers tired of the Federation first and foremost. "But once Alexis Kerib got involved it became worse for everyone..." Some helper he is.
"I think so too," Alouette nods, at Ruri's conclusion. "He has been letting BioNet use Akane's kaiju," She offers her own piece of information, related to that statement. "A lot of BioNet is like that. They act like they're helping you, but..." There's a hint of vulnerability in that statement as she trails off. A coward behind a flimsy layer of politeness, Alexis reminds her of Gimlet in all the worst ways.
<Pose Tracker> Ruri Hoshino has posed.
"Nergal-san are my sponsors," Ruri explains, stoic. They bought her here, after all!
(That's not a typo.)
"But I am the youngest, yes." She doesn't like being thought of a child, but even so, her age is an objective fact. "Most people on the Nadesico are adults."
She nods, on the topic of getting them back, no matter what. She can admire Alouette's tenacity, and that's important, too. And she listens to Alouette's conclusions about Alexis, without interrupting.
"... I don't think everyone in BioNet is a bad person, though," Ruri points out, mildly, and does not catch Alouette's own subtlety. (Her heart is more closed a thing, to humans.) "I suppose Dr. Dorothy was associated with them, too... well, since she was Dr. Dorothy Spartura. But she was always kind to me." Which might say something alarming, about Ruri's propensity for befriending people who really sound like they might be bad news. She doesn't sound like she's lying, though.
Spartura was always nice to her.
"Mr. Kerib is a salaryman," Ruri says, without much inflection. "So it's hard to imagine him being an architect. But he's also thousands of years old, and he's seen a lot of different worlds. I guess he might have learned how to be the bad guy, somewhere along the way."
She taps the toe of her metal shoe against the floor. "But Mr. Kerib is very good at separating you from the people around you, and making you feel like they're wronging you. Well, I guess psychological tactics are a part of business, too..." She's more thoughtful, than anything, as she tilts her head. "So I think Mr. Kerib was probably trying to isolate Ms. Shinjo, too, by letting other people attack with her kaiju. Because then they'd blame her, or she'd blame herself. I think she's the sort of person who would do that."
Ruri pauses, briefly.
"She didn't like it when I called her a child soldier. Ms. Subaru said people don't like to be called that to their faces, so I guess it might not mean anything, but I don't think my analysis is incorrect." There is -- if anything -- a hint of petulance, to that last statement.
Alexis Kerib engineered an environment where Ruri was competing with Akane for his attention, and, yes: here, she is competitive.
<Pose Tracker> Alouette Pommier has posed.
"Yes," Alouette agrees, when Ruri states that she doesn't think everyone in BioNet is a bad person. She moves past all subtleties and puts her own thoughts on the matter out there. "BioNet were the ones who raised me. I think I turned out to be a very cold person under their care." Although she admonishes her past self, she follows the logic that it didn't make her a bad person. "Once 3G rescued me and brought me home to mother, I learned how to love people. I suppose there's a lot of people in BioNet who are like me.. ones that I never got to meet."
The mention of Dr. Dorothy Spartura gets an inquisitive glance. Spartura must've been the one who sent out High Tension, seeing as she vanished immediately after the battle. She doesn't question Ruri, though - she just stares for a moment.
"So you don't think he was always this way," She muses at Ruri's wording of "learning to be the bad guy". "I hope in his next lifetime he learns how to be good again," she continues simply - but revealing less hatred and more disappointment in her tone.
"Miss Shinjo's kaiju are carved from her heart," Alouette brushes her cravat a little. "As a designer, what I make is close to my heart as well. So I understand her feelings, but..." She thinks about the contrast between Akane making kaiju from her heart, and her claims that kaiju are born to die. "I think Miss Shinjo should be kinder to herself."
Ruri's comparison of Akane as a child soldier and that hint of childishness in that statement almost gets a laugh from Alouette. But honestly, she's right in many ways. "She might not be a military member, but it's true.. her mindset is like a child soldier. She thinks that all she has left is.. fighting." Coming from someone who just vowed to keep fighting no matter what, that might be an interesting statement. "It can good to fight for what you believe in, for people you love. But what Miss Shinjo is fighting for... I don't even know if she believes in it anymore." Does she really still believe that killing a Vessel of Light will fix her life? Alouette is beginning to doubt it.
<Pose Tracker> Ruri Hoshino has posed.
Ruri remembers the pilot of the High Tension.
Past tense.
"I suppose it's possible," Ruri says, lightly, on Alexis learning to be good. "But I think he's a very complicated person, so it won't be easy."
But... Akane's kaiju are carved from her heart, and Ruri wonders what it means, that she's carving off pieces of her heart and killing them.
"Specifically," the child soldier called Ruri says, "Ms. Shinjo believes she has to fight in order to maintain her safety. Her self-worth is caught up in it. She looks at a situation in terms of 'weakness' and 'strength', and is unkind to herself and everyone around her for not being 'strong enough'. And she's making herself the target by attacking everyone, so that they'll hesitate to attack her back, because she's still a child." She delivers the analysis with no particular venom, and no particular regret.
It's just the truth, after all.
"She's being victimised by Mr. Kerib," Ruri told him to his face, and she'll tell Alouette, too, with a little more certainty. "So even if she's being foolish, it's not entirely her fault. Well, as for saving her, I don't know how that would work, since she has reasons to stay there." Ruri doesn't need saving, but there's a reason, perhaps, why she's struggled to figure out a solution based on her analysis.
"It's a very unfortunate situation. Unfortunately, Ms. Shinjo doesn't exactly want my help, either."
<Pose Tracker> Alouette Pommier has posed.
Alouette crosses her hands and listens to Ruri's analysis. Alouette is no soldier - it wasn't what she was designed for and it wasn't what she grew up to become. "So she sees it in terms of strength and weakness rather than will.. that makes sense." Each of Akane's subsequent kaiju after all - are designed to exploit some kind of exposed weakness of the Gridman Alliance. It began with taking advantage of Gridman's reliance on beams, and most recently culminated in exploiting a desire for understanding.
"It will take all the courage we have," Alouette echoes Guy's words to her in regards to saving Akane. "Not just our courage. If she will truly reject everyone's help, I think her own courage will save her." There's no true analysis here, but Alouette believes strongly in it nonetheless. Maybe because the past two months taught her intimately what that victimisation feels like - and most importantly, how to break free of it.
"I hope I can help her find her reason to wake up."