2022-12-16: Your comprehension of this hollow existence is what's at issue
- Log: Your comprehension of this hollow existence is what's at issue
- Cast: Leina Ashta, Rena Lancaster, Yuliana Kafim
- Where: Denver Colony
- Date: 2022-12-16 (OOC date: 2022-12-14)
- Summary: Yuliana finds Leina and Rena, and confronts them -- only for Leina to confront Yuliana about Rita and the presence in the void. Rena voices her anger and the lines Yuliana must cease to cross, but Yuliana is a woman who crosses the line too easily and too reflexively to stop here.
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
Awakening from dreams is always strange, typically there's just this lingering feeling as the images slip out of your mind like sand through fingers.
The moment Leina's eyes opened however, she finds herself staring at the ceiling assessing whether all of what she just experienced was real.
Not a single moment was slipping away.
After a few minutes, her breath hitches as she turns to the side, and she lets herself sob in the silence of the repurposed tomb.
-=-=-
Suiting up for a long trek, she took a few days of rations, melted ice to fill a makeshift canteen, and shouldered a toolbag she found.
Rena was left a note scrawled on the wall. It amounted to 'North, Return by Noon.' As per their agreement, that instead translated to 'South, Be Gone All Day.' just in case someone found this place.
She had received a flash of intuition that North was not the direction she wanted to go today. It felt less likely the source was the danger though, more like it was a warning. She decided to trust that warning.
She did not check the Linear Rail South. That felt like a good way to come face to face with someone she did not want to, instead she set out on the Colonial High Way, checking Elecars.
Every time she saw bodies that were only just starting to decompose from the air coming back on she tried her best not to look away.
A family. A brother and sister maybe.
She thinks back to how Neo-Zeon fought in Shangri-la, punching holes in the Colony with only a token effort not to for the civilians caught up in the middle of it.
Was this all some horrible Psychoframe experiment that did this? She did not doubt that it was, the only question is...
... what kind? She thinks of blue fire, eyes turning to look upon her captors. She keeps walking, along the dead highway dotted in cars.
Eventually, she takes out her pistol and smashes the window of the car, opens the door, and checks under the visor to find some spare keys. The starter tries to turn over but...
"Out of power..." Leina murmurs. Shifting the car into neutral, with a hand, she begins pushing the car, slowly turning the wheel to weave around cars as she pushes it along. There were mercifully few bodies, most had tried to reach evacuation shelters.
The charging station still worked, and she filled it up. With an experimental turn of the starter and a toss of her Normal suit's helmet to the passenger seat she was off.
-=-=-
Pulling up a good distance from the Colony Defense barracks that disappeared into the bowels of the Colony, Leina checked her gun again, stuffing it into the pouch of her normal suit, then put her helmet inside the kit and started to walk.
All they needed was to find one MP suit, it'd be enough to get them out, give the situation a more thorough assessment, give them a chance to survive.
Even though she turned it off, and took the keys the engine is still warm to anyone who checks it.
Inside the armory was pretty much empty, Leina suspected it was simply all hands on deck during whatever emergency was going on. The hangar? Definitely didn't have what she hoped for, but so far she'd found a few days more of MREs, some more ammunition, and a portable vernier, which she was now wearing.
There was only one suit in the hangar, a forgotten Petit Mobile suit, which she's currently halfway stuffed herself into, trying to get it working. She's no mechanic, which is forcing her to try and figure out the problem with just sheer instinct - that's not going as well or as quickly as she'd like.
"... Things I thought I would never say, 'I wish Mondo were here right about now.'"
He always was good with getting these old machines working. With a laugh, she keeps trying to unscrew a panel.
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
Rena had reunited with Leina, after a rendezvous with her friends. Eight and Anita had to check on the Ra Mari; Rena wanted to explore deeper into the facility, in hopes of finding whatever at Denver Colony causes these problems.
She follows after Leina. Her own preparations are similar; a thermos, rations packed away, a sidearm, and a rifle. She doesn't really hesitate to look away from the corpses, as they walk, stopping at a car. She grimaces.
And now, they're at the barracks. She looks over the hangar -- and peers down the way.
"Maybe we'll find more in the next room," she says, after a moment's hesitation. "The pickings are slim here. I know there's some units supposed to be in here, but..."
She trails off. Then, she sighs.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana had intended to keep searching the North end of the colony -- just as she'd told Ennil -- but it wasn't long before the doubt of those search results buried in her mind.
Her name came up, somewhere. Anyone could get that information... if they found it.
If they find it.
And so she'd doubled back the way she came, to destroy the computer banks of that satellite facility. If that were the end of it -- but that isn't the end of it; a saboteur like Yuliana knows how computer systems work. She can't stop here. She has to find...
... well, Colony Defence is certainly a good start.
Yuliana's dark fingers press against the hood of the elecar, and her eyes narrow. They're exposed, now the helmet of her green normal suit is down. She's since dispensed with her veil. She has a bag slung over her shoulder; she's been grave-robbing, of course. It's a matter of survival. So is this, and it would be smarter, perhaps, to avoid the area until whoever is here has left.
(She still remembers Puru Two's words, and has no desire to test her anger without a backup plan.)
But when there are limited resources -- and threats hanging over head -- there's not always time to wait.
She draws her own sidearm, as she steps inside. Give her some credit: she does not stride out, obvious as anything. She keeps to the shadows, presses herself against some forgotten warehouse crate as she sneaks closer to the hapless mechanic Leina.
But Rena is keeping an eye on Leina's back, and the strange green of Yuliana's eyes catches hers, at just the wrong moment -- and uncomfortably close to the Petit. She unfolds the instant she's spotted, straightening and standing to aim that weapon straight at Rena, centre mass.
"Wrong panel, dear," she remarks, dryly, without looking at Leina. "You're accessing the shock absorbers."
Her safety is already off, so there's no real motion associated with the way she addresses Rena. "Now -- are we going to have a problem, Renalle? Because really, I've had something of a bad day, so I could go either way vis-a-vis leaving your stinking corpse in this nameless tomb." And, for better or for worse, her threat focuses on Rena -- not Leina.
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
It was a relief when Rena linked up with her. She hates being alone, but she understands the necessity. It was a big Colony, and there's so much ground to cover.
Leina wipes at her brow, as she gives Rena a smile, "Don't worry Renalle. There's got to be something we can use. If not here, then it's not that long a drive to the next one?"
She's pushing herself to be the optimist here, her inclinations are to be the glass half empty person but to hope the glass could be half full.
Better than the despair sinking into her, better than letting herself get overwhelmed again.
Still, she continues working at the panel, oblivious to Yuliana's presence, perhaps one of the only people whose intentionality would not reveal itself to the two Newtypes.
When she hears the voice, Leina freezes, then straightens up, putting her hands up, she doesn't make a move for her gun.
Instead she lets the screwdriver fall, in the Low Gravity it takes an extra moment to ping against the floor.
"Yuliana... please. Don't do this. We're just trying to get out of here, same as you. Renalle's a friend of mine. Please don't shoot her. I only recently got to see her again, after being separated for so long."
She makes no sudden movements, just keeping her hands up as she turns to face her, right now just trying to distract her away from the idea of shooting Rena.
"This isn't you. You didn't used to be this way." This is a risk and she knows it but if it saves Rena...?
It's worth it.
"Rita told me. She still thinks of you as friend, even now."
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
"That's true," Rena says to Leina, and she gives her a quick smile. "We'll get it."
She could help -- but only one person can really work at a panel at a time. Which is good, because a guard is wise, and the need for one is soon proven.
Rena's eyes narrow as soon as she spots that green in Yuliana's eyes. She cannot feel her coming; she has to rely on her senses. They are, of course, sharp. Most Coordinators' are.
She has a hand on her sidearm immediately, though it isn't drawn.
"Captain Dispersal," she says, her voice cool. "I see you've snuck along in here, too."
She glances once at Leina. She tenses, hesitating; Leina is appealing to Yuliana to be calm. Something about a person named Rita. Rena isn't so sure about this working.
She looks at Yuliana for a moment, still tense -- and contemplating her chances of drawing. "What do you want?"
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
The glass could be half full! But it isn't.
Yuliana drank the water, you see.
Her expression remains quite hard, as Leina pleads, eyes focused on Rena. (Leina won't like it, she supposes, in her bell-jar heart.) "It's Captain Kafim, now," she informs the Coordinator, tone cool. "I've married."
But Leina says she wasn't always this way, and at first the corner of Yuliana's lip just twitches upwards in her scorn -- until she finishes her thought. Yuliana stiffens, a gesture entirely unlike the ready-tension of bracing to fire, and her gaze finally snaps over to look at Leina properly.
"She's here?!" All the heat floods into her voice again, and it would be easy to call it anger. She demands: "Where is she? Where's Rita?! Tell me!"
It's not, entirely, an answer to what she wants -- but it's the closest to distracted she's going to get.
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
Leina has her hands up. As far as Yuliana knows she's a non combatant beyond her flailing about in a mobile suit, and it's best to keep it that way until the moment she pulls her gun.
She's upset at her, certainly, for what she nearly did to Banagher and Mineva.
Right now though, in the high emotions of the standoff, it's best to bury that anger right now. She can address that harm later.
Saving Rena is what's important. Stay calm. Stay calm. Stay calm.
Sayla's run her through this scenario a thousand times.
There's a faint wince as Rena calls her Dispersal, what comes next is expected.
'What do you want?'
It's what Leina wants to know too, but...
Yuliana's response both unexpectedly, and exactly as expected in some ways, "I don't know... where she is."
Leina answers, and it's the truth, "She came to me in a dream. She said she can't talk to you anymore, and it makes her sad."
Good, her eyes on her, even if her gun is on Rena, that's exactly the response she wanted right now, "She's not... a person anymore." A beat as she offers explanation to her, "The experiments."
She doesn't intend to tell her everything, just enough, "If you lower your gun and let Renalle go, we can talk about it."
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
"My apologies, Captain Kafim," Rena says. It's even a little sincere.
Her eyes widen a little, as Leina's statement prompts sudden heat and anger out of Yuliana. That makes her tilt her head for a moment, and then she looks sideways at Leina, waiting for an explanation.
The experiments?
Rena's eyes narrow. It must be something Leina learned -- in a dream, it sounds like -- and she wonders about that. Dreams for a Newtype can mean a lot. She looks back at Yuliana.
"This... is somebody you know, Captain?" she asks.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Calm? Calm is for cows to the slaughter. Yuliana is MAD.
"What's that supposed to mean?! Put aside your flagrant violations of reality and speak plainly!" But even though Yuliana's yelling about it, she at least recognises something, in what Leina says.
She's heard Pham say they're not human before.
Her grip tightens, on her sidearm. "Why should I trust you?!" She says, at volume. "You must have just read about it in some correspondence here -- right?! You're a damn liar!" Oh. Maybe that's what Yuliana wants.
"You...!" She chokes on the invective, as the rest of her mind catches up to her anger, reminds her of Elisa's plans. For a moment she is silent, but for the rise and fall of her chest, the sound of air dragged across a sharp fang. (The same one Eight knocked out. She must have gotten a replacement.)
Finally -- finally, Yuliana flicks the safety on her gun, and seats it back in its holster.
"Ultimately inconsequential," she answers Rena, tone normalising to standoffish instead of standoff screaming. "I just happened to... work with her," a convenient euphemism, "when I was younger. She served her purpose."
She scowls. "I don't know what happened to her after that. It's a matter of idle curiosity. Nothing more." But if Yuliana really doesn't care, why was she screaming..?
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
Leina's eyes flick sideways to Rena, the sea green in them asking her to trust her a little here.
Yuliana calls her a damned liar, but her mind chokes on invective. There's a moment of tension, where Leina's hand twitches, but doesn't actually make that move.
However, then she seats it back into her holster. And she breathes a sigh of relief, lowering her hands. Yuliana tries to define what Rita was to her.
A matter of idle curiosity and nothing more? Someone she used and served her purpose?
Leina is fairly sure she's lying, she bristles a touch at how she phrases it.
"'Keep your head down, don't cause trouble, they'll get you sorted out and send you back into the world. We're more valuable to the Republic out there than in here. So long as you're tough, you'll be fine."
Her seagreen eyes fasten on Yuliana with a certain intensity, "'... It's not forever. We can live a normal life again.'"
Maybe Yuliana will remember, maybe she won't, it might at least spark a memory at least.
Her eyes slide over back to Rena, then back at Yuliana.
"I want you to stop Blackmailing Renalle, Yuliana." She knows she can't convince her to stop pursuing Banagher, she's too mad at Captain Aiden. Feels the Unicorn will give her that edge, "I can tell you more about Rita, if you let that go."
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
Rena's eyes narrow.
She isn't sure she believes what Yuliana said. It seems like a lot more than 'inconsequential.' She scowls, before she looks back at Yuliana. Is this really information they should trust Yuliana with? But...
Leina asks her to trust her. And, as a rule, Rena does.
She looks at Leina for a long moment -- wondering what she is quoting -- and then she looks back at Yuliana. She hesitates for a second.
"It's not enough to stop blackmailing me," she finds herself saying, quietly. "It's... it's not about me. You have to stop. Stop hurting people, stop making the world a worse place than you found it because you're hurt and you're angry. If you want to come after me, whatever. But..."
She shakes her head. "...It's more than me you're hurting. No, Leina," she says. "I'm sorry. I don't want her to let me off, just to turn it all on someone else instead."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana's eyes widen -- not sea green, hers were always a more uncomfortable shade -- and she pulls back, a step, recoiling from Leina's recitation as surely as a bullet.
Oh, yes, she remembers. She has forgotten little of the past eleven years. Perhaps that's why she's so, so cruel.
"What do you know of forever?!" She demands, a wound lanced into her -- those words she always used, to comfort the other victims of Medical.
Eventually, she stopped using them.
Leina makes her demands, and at first she is angry -- "You--!", she barks, lurching forward a step with fist raised -- and if it were really inconsequential, perhaps she'd stay that way. But Yuliana sinks back, hand crossing her chest to grasp at her arm, looking away.
Whether she's considering Leina's ultimatum or just playing another of her games with that hesitation is a secret locked in the fortress of herself; Yuliana's intent has always been a horrific hollow, gouged into the world.
What might have happened will remain a mystery forever, because Rena has her own demands to make.
Yuliana's lax posture tightens, again, her gloves digging into the arm of her normal suit, as she glares up at Rena. "You... impertinent wretch," she hisses, still wounded and no less angry for it. "You think to make such flagrant demands of me -- for some vain imprudence of my youth?! You know nothing of the world's path, of the ruin you deserve! That I still was comprehending that hatred so long prior is not something you may press for indefinite advantage!" There's something to the way she phrases her hatred which sounds almost removed from her -- but given her theatrical way of speaking, was it even intentional?
"It was not I who denied your parlay!" She insists, to Leina, vicious, before her gaze snaps to Rena again. "And you -- your arrogance will not go unanswered." As Yuliana's teeth grit over her lip, a thin trail of blood starts to snake down along her chin.
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
Yuliana's demand causes a look of sympathy within her eyes, "I don't." What Leina went through had a very defined ending, "I know that you married Elisa though, I know she makes you happy."
As if saying that she was allowed some semblance of normality. Some.
Leina looks sideways at Rena as she begins, "Renalle?" She says quietly, but Renalle's demands instead...
... she understands that. She wants the same really. She just doesn't think it's possible, all at once.
Leina always did try to protect the people she cares about.
It's not just Renalle, it's the crew of the Ra Mari too. It's Callisto. She's not even certain what to make of Alma transferring to the REA right after discovering she had a daughter in Londo Bell.
She suspects nothing good, however she can't say it to a certainty
There's a deep inhalation, then an exhalation, and a nod. "Alright... if you're sure Renalle..."
It's less a question, because she knows she is.
She was hoping to protect people with these small steps, even if she can't make Yuliana stop.
Yuliana then starts hissing at Rena angrily, and Leina watches to make certain that hand doesn't go for a gun, her own hand trailing near a pouch on her normal suit.
She makes no obvious motions like there's a gun inside. She just waits to make certain the anger passes.
Yuliana snaps at Rena, and her tone becomes firm, "Yuliana. She's frustrated, angry. You're not just hurting her, but harassing of her friends on the Ra Mari. Can you really blame her? If it were someone blackmailing Elisa with something that could hurt her, or someone staging a campaign of harassment against her, how would you feel?"
Leina now adds, "I'm angry too for what happened in Khanka. If Audrey and I hadn't done what we did, where would Banagher be right now?"
Then... finally.
"Rita's upset too. She preferred showing me your excitement of working on Gundams, rather than using her as a human shield in tests... even now though? She wants to help you, just like I do."
There's a moment of hesitation, uncertainty. She can't talk about the eyes. How it felt similar to Elisa.
There is an angle she can approach it, "You talk about hatred as if it were something you learned."
She--She doesn't like you.
"Is it... 'Her' hatred that you're taking up?"
It's not as if she believes it was all her, of course it was mostly the REA, manipulating her to blame someone else rather than the people in power...
... but was it really only that?
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
"Just because I haven't been hurt like you doesn't mean I don't understand pain. And I might be younger than you, but I figured out a long time ago that how much something hurts doesn't make that pain greater than anyone else's," Rena says. "And that hurt doesn't justify inflicting new hurts on someone else."
She grits her teeth, her fingers hesitating over her firearm, and she debates drawing the weapon out of safety.
But she refrains.
She looks at Leina, then. She nods once at her -- even if Leina can feel it. Rena meant it. "Rita... someone who was there with her," she says. She could figure that much out about Yuliana. They kept meeting at medical facilities.
And Leina told her some. Rena looks back at the other soldier, when she snaps at her.
"Stop saying that what I am, what I was born as, is doing something to you," Rena says. "I didn't do anything to you except have the gall to exist in the same space as you. And--"
Her eyes narrow. "If you're frightened of what I can do to you just by living and breathing in your general vicinity, then think really hard about what happens when I decide to actually do something. I'm much more than my mother's daughter, Captain."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"Mm..." Yuliana hums, in unsettled quiet, as Leina brings up the normality she's able to enjoy.
"Don't assume I was hurt so easily," Yuliana snaps, to Rena. "I'm not some pitiful lab rat like your darling little Captain. You should realise -- I'm the one doling out your retribution!" She's not being used; she's the one using others. Say it again, and again, and again.
But Leina invokes Elisa again, instead, and Yuliana scowls. "Don't use my dearest zhenushka for your fruitless hypotheticals!" She says -- and doesn't engage with the premise of the question, so irrelevant is it to Elisa's grace.
"I've no love nor use for child soldiers," she insists, hotly, when Leina invokes Khanka and Banagher. "The boy would be free to go as soon as he'd told me where his Gundam was! I --" she pauses, and glances away. "I know you value him. I was as delicate as I could be, given the opportunity." And perhaps it's not even entirely a lie; the Nega Force did take pains to avoid casualties, during their raid.
But Leina invokes Rita, again, and Yuliana's other arm rises, crossing over her chest, holding herself firm. "So what?" She asks, but her voice is smaller as she says it. "They were pleased I'd figured out a way through... it's her own fault if she didn't think to take advantage! My only fault was in taking so long to realise the solution! I have... no need for sentimentality when it comes to my dinner." She can't quite meet Leina's eyes, though, and her anger is complicated by a strange kind of... regret?
Surely not. It must be another trick.
She hears the other factor Leina blames for her hatred, certainly, but her attention first orients on Rena. (Primary threat.) "You cannot comprehend what you do to me," she says, all tension, all heat. Even so, she hasn't drawn her gun, again. "What your existence inflicts on me! The real world, all glimpsed in the edges of this fake existence you've torn from its hinges with your lack! Yes," she says, to Leina, finally, lips curled, "it is through your violations I know Her unfathomable hatred -- that we are unlike you! I don't belong here! That longing, that blame... you would shatter would you glimpse it!" She spreads her arms, finally, in a wide and unleashed gesture.
"If only you knew... you would shoot yourselves, and save me the trouble." She sneers, as she straightens, glaring to Rena. "But you'd not be so courteous, it seems... you wretched briar. Do you expect me to fear you? No. Fear me, Renalle, and the revelations to come."
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
It's true, Leina thinks, that just because Rena hasn't been hurt like Yuliana that she doesn't understand pain. She knows very well that isn't true...
... it's true for her too, isn't it? Before she nods in confirmation to Rena, "Yeah. She was." Rena focuses on the fact that she should be allowed to exist, that it isn't a crime - or violation, and Leina thinks of how Mineva spoke - what upset her.
She pieces it together with what Yuliana said, about reality boring into her skull and tearing her apart.
No use for child soldiers? That feels true, and in this moment Leina decides not to press further, "And I do appreciate that."
There's no need to tell her the Unicorn is keyed to Banagher, that it wouldn't work unless he activated it. "I'm still mad but I understand you were at least trying not to kill us, or anyone else there."
Leina's eyes narrow however on her description of the events, "That's not what it was and you know it. By then they knew exactly the extent of your abilities. It wasn't a test for Rita at all. It was a test for you to pass... and you did, pass."
Leina's eyes bore right into Yuliana, "Your superiors are invested in you hating Newtypes, because then you're distracted away from the possibility of turning on them for the harm they do to you. Because then you become a more effective Anti-Newtype 'weapon' in their eyes. That's not unique to the REA. That's done everywhere."
Glemy did it to Elpeo, she realizes now.
Yuliana speaks about what Rena's existence does to her, and Leina gives her an angry look, "I get it now. I didn't before. Not quite. It's not our reality you're feeling. You're feeling 'Hers'. Our presence hurts you - because she doesn't like us. Because something about us is anathema to 'Her'."
As Leina works through the logical progression, she finally comes to one singular conclusion, "And that's not true, Yuliana. We wouldn't."
Shoot ourselves.
Leina reaches down to pick up the screw driver, then squats down, and starts scraping something on the ground with metallic shrieks. It's a slow process, but when she's done...
... there are crude drawings of eyes, scratched right into the metal, the moment Rena looks at them-
eyes
eyes
in
the
dark
staring
staring
at
me
-she might receive the feelings a person receives brushing against something they can't comprehend, the cold feeling in the pit of her stomach, the second hand feelings of overwhelming terror that comes of trying to connect to something that cannot be.
"I understand." She murmurs quietly, and there's this haunted look in her eyes, as one hand rubs the opposite arm, "God help me. I do."
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
"My retribution for existing? Breathing the same air as you?" Rena snaps. "And don't you dare call Eight pitiful. You're not half the person she is."
She scowls at that -- though there's a glance at Leina. Would someone try that with Elisa Kafim? She knows nothing of her, nor what she might do. Maybe Rena should start paying attention to that.
Her eyes look to what Leina scrapes into the metal. Eyes -- and that impression of the darkness, staring back. And it's real, she realizes; there's something there.
She should really start paying attention to that.
She looks back to Yuliana, eyes wide. "You--" She tenses, though, when Yuliana wheels around on her, at least verbally. "I don't do anything to you! You need to understand that! People existing doesn't do something to you. We're here!"
She puts a hand over her heart. "You're right that you're not like us. But we're not going to die because it would be convenient... and if you're going to try to poison the world, we're going to stop you." She shakes her head. "I don't expect you to fear me. Unlike you, I'm not going to tell you how to feel about me. You can decide that."
A pause; a moment that lasts briefly, but goes on.
"Can't you?"
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana sneers, as Rena defends Eight. "You're right about that," she says, imperious. "I'm not at all a person like Eight is. No... in fact, I haven't been a 'person' for a long time."
She looks to Leina, when she says more about the Khanka attack. "You would be angry, yes. That much is your right." Yuliana's tone is dismissive, as if she's brushing aside Leina's feelings, but -- it's strange, the way she recognises any shred of her feelings.
But when Leina tells her she did pass, Yuliana flinches, fingers tightening as she grasps her own arms. "Don't dissociate me from my hatred so easily!" She hisses, and still can't bring herself to look at Leina for long. "I'm aware of your frankly hurtful opinion of my country, but your baseless accusations are far from truth!" She shakes her head, emphatically, and yells: "It doesn't even hurt!"
But if Yuliana says the sky is blue, you should really, REALLY check.
"It's your fault," Yuliana answers Leina, in the wake of her anger and her logical conclusion. There is something vague to her words, as if it's something felt, the emotional impression of truth. But there is nothing to be felt, from Yuliana. Nothing --
She is surrounded by nothing. Embraced by nothing. The one person who cannot escape her silence is Yuliana herself.
Even so, Rena says she didn't do anything to her. And how outrageous a claim!, Yuliana thinks, in the bell-jar of her heart. "Poison the world?" She wonders, a shade miserable. "Stupid girl. You are still so uncomprehending! I have no desire to destroy the world... but one person has the power to change it." Someone enamoured with the Gundam Fight... would think that way, wouldn't she? "I will set this world to rights. I will bring equality to the Earth Sphere. That I am a poisonous thing -- it will only help me fight against your transgressions!"
Still, she calls them transgressions.
"It's always been my decision!" She yells, gesturing, angrily. "I am the one in control here! I am not so easily manipulated by cause nor country -- no, I am the one who manipulates!" The sky isn't blue, by the way. "And I hate you! I hate you, Renalle! And you--"
She turns to Leina, in anger, only to see her haunted look. Her hand lifts, to brush at the scarred side of her face -- the place where her bangs used to be, before Torrington. She can't hide, any more. "Mm," her anger fades to something more conflicted, "I... do get the impression you understand... something of emptiness," Yuliana offers Leina, quieter, less armed. Just as Rena pointed out, she dictates the younger girl's feelings, grasping for control: "I know you won't forgive me, but, I... wish you hadn't made friends with such objectionable people, that we keep meeting in this way. It's... a shame."
And the contrast between them -- the hate she can easily feel for Rena, and the conflict she feels about Leina -- is no more plain than here, in her responses to both of them.
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
Honestly she should be yelling with Rena, it's what she does with every run of the mill asshole out there. Rena's hurt is real, and she feels every single word that she says.
It's just, she remembers, in the end, what it took for Elpeo...
... and if she can't, then she'll need to be stopped. She knows that now. She'll keep trying though.
Her frankly hurtful opinion of her country.
"Have you ever held down a job Yuliana, had a boss tell you that it's the fault of the other workers for being lazy, that life is so hard on you? It has nothing to do with the REA... it has everything to do with those who wield power over other people."
And there's a certain anger in her eyes again, as she comprehends how Yuliana says its her fault. She doesn't respond immediately, as she tells her how enamored she is of changing the world, "Just like Shuuji?" Leina asks her pointedly. "Is that how you intend to change it?"
Yuliana looks more conflicted as she tells her she understands something of emptiness. "You're right. I don't forgive you. That would take something you aren't willing to give right now. I still want to help you..." She arches an eyebrow, looking annoyed, even a little angry, "Objectionable people though? Do you know how I awakened as a Newtype, Yuliana? It was as a prisoner of war... of Axis Zeon. I was ten, on an AEUG battleship, and a certain man you've probably heard of snatched me during a battle."
She says quietly, "Glemy Toto. He decided he was going to turn me, a girl from the slums of Shangri-la into a lady of Neo-Zeon - and it didn't matter how much I never wanted that."
Leina slowly walks towards Rena at this point, "I was forced anyway, to become something I didn't want to be. And while it may be nothing compared to what you've suffered?"
She grows quieter, "I still suffered, mostly in silence. And on the day he presented me to the world, I awakened. I felt it."
Her seagreen eyes make contact with her own, "The hollow spaces where people's hearts ought to be."
Leina paused in walking to say that, but now she keeps walking towards Rena, "That whole time I was suffering on Axis - only two people bothered to care, to give the slightest damn about me."
And once she's close enough, she puts an arm around Rena, to hug her from the side, "Renalle was one of them. Objectionable?" Leina smiles at Rena, even as she speaks at Yuliana, "She's the furthest thing, from that. There's not a single thing you could ever say to make me think poorly of her, Yuliana."
She's still looking at Rena as she says, "And I think you understand that very well. After all." Leina's head turns to slowly look at Yuliana to give her a look of sympathy, "There were people like that there for you too weren't there?"
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
Part of Rena wants to scream, as Yuliana tells Leina what she feels. The very thing she accused her of, a moment before. But Yuliana also says something important, too; or rather, what she doesn't say. She seems to care about Leina, in a way she doesn't for Rena. Or, perhaps, for most of them.
"Not a person? That's--no, you're a person," Rena says. Her eyes narrow, though, and she shakes her head. "I don't know what kind of equality you're imagining, but... I have my doubts."
Leina walks towards her -- and Rena looks at her sidelong. She smiles a little, when Leina says what she did. She almost flushes; she manages to not, though, and turns a look back at Yuliana, instead.
Rena's eyes narrow again. A cold, but clear realization goes through her. "You... you think you're in control," she says, realizing. "Or you want to be. But don't you understand?" She stays put, standing side by side with her friend. "You don't control me, just because you hate me. Or because you hurt me."
Rena hesitates for a second. "And you don't get to use your hate to define me. I'm not perfect, but... I'm not what's wrong with this world."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"I have always served my country," Yuliana answers Leina, when she talks about bad bosses. It's not... entirely a denial.
She frowns, though, as Leina invokes Master Asia. "I was redirected from my mission to face the Devil Gundam, girl," she says, and her tone is colder. "I served with honour and distinction against a terrible force that would have destroyed my melee wanzer were I any less. Do not presume to place those wrongs on me -- when I helped turn them aside!"
She has enough of a frown for Rena, too. "I am that I am," she issues, to her, on the topic of her personhood. "And of course you would doubt equality, reigning above normal people. The next step of humanity is not yours to take!" Because, of course, it's theirs.
But... Leina tells her about Glemy Toto, and Yuliana frowns, grasping her arm with a hand again. She looks at her, as she talks about the hollow spaces, and there's recognition in her jealous green eyes.
Her lips curl, then, as Leina embraces Rena. She is so angry, seeing the bonds they share, a green-eyed monster staring up. Her mad envy is interrupted, though, by Leina's sympathy -- and guilt is the thing which clouds her eyes, as she looks away.
"I sold them out," she says, with a pained sort of restraint. "I told them I'd hurt them. I was made to hurt them. They didn't listen... so I betrayed them! I'm the one who did that..!" And once again she positions herself as the sole arbiter of their fates. The first time, she wasn't even consulted, but by the time the second came around...
And Rena realises something, and Yuliana glares at her, with eyes which catch the light too, too much. (Tears? Surely not.) "Why not?" She demands, and her voice is weak and thready. "Why not?! That's how this world works!"
That's how her world works.
"You... you, you awful..." Her breath hitches in her throat, and Yuliana takes another step back. "I'll let you go today," she insists, as if she's the one in control. "But I won't forget this, Renalle...!" Rena's the one who takes the blame, and perhaps it's because of the hollowness Leina witnessed, back then.
Yuliana turns, and runs from the compound, and give her some credit: she does keep her guard up, back turned, to make sure she doesn't get a bullet for her troubles.
She's the sort of person who believes she would, because she's the sort of person who would. How distant Leina and Rena's world must be to her.