2023-01-15: If Someone's Gonna It's Probably Gonna Be the Pervs
- Log: If Someone's Gonna It's Probably Gonna Be the Pervs
- Cast: Roux Louka, Judau Ashta
- Where: Villa Mass, AEU Spain
- OOC - IC Date: UC 0097-01-15
- Summary: Roux and Judau discuss recent events, future plans, and the importance of pervs as the cornerstone of the revolution. Also, Judau learns that the Shuffle Alliance is really a--?! READ TO FIND OUT, WHY DON'T YOU
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
In the home of a disappeared woman, and the current legal address complete with mail forwarding from the harried but curiously robust Federal Postal Corps, Roux Louka sits on the patio.
And almost despite herself, she has a bottle of wine out.
Why does she have it? Well, she isn't a BIG drinker, traditionally... and indeed the last time she had more than a polite with-dinner portion she had, to her own judgment, made an ass out of herself at a party, even if nobody had said so. But...
This home is the property of a woman who has disappeared. Maybe she'll never come back.
There's a strange invitation in the air. A lifeline, a thread of hope, or just another conspiratorial organization? Something secretive, reaching out for people to mash and grind into the fine paste that fuels the ever-hungry machine even as it inculcates their dreams, the same way you put micro-organisms in whole milk to get yogurt?
And...
The girl who invited her to that shadowy organization. Leina Ashta. The girl Roux knew secondhand, for the most part, until quite recently. Sweet and earnest, when she knew her. Cruelities, however strained, that she still sometimes feels. And now Roux wonders sometimes if that person she knew is still there, but how much of that is simply that -- she grew up, and Roux didn't see it happen?
And from there, beyond that. The recent conflicts. Battles in the heavens. An impossible chance, made, even so. And...
... anyway, that's why Roux is having wine. She drains the glass and then refills it, as a thought crosses her mind -
i need you
- which she validates by bringing out her phone to send a short text message.
> hey
> (roux is typing...)
Roux frowns to herself. If I say 'can we talk?' or 'we need to talk' he's going to freak out. But if I try to play it cool, he might not understand it... what can I say to make him come here, and take things a little seriously? Roux rests her chin on her loosely curled hand, thinking about it.
> (roux is typing...)
Ah, she thinks, that's it.
> i need to talk to you about something
> can you come down?
It would be really appropriate if this happened around a starry evening, but it's actually like 2:30 PM in the afternoon. It is legal to drink at 2:30 PM in Europe. That's not a problem, that's how you survive being in Europe.
And with that Roux lifts her head and gazes up towards the sky, wine glass in her hand.
<Pose Tracker> Judau Ashta has posed.
It's a weird thing, being invited to stay at a palace, only for its owner to disappear not a handful of weeks later.
It's a weird thing, when practically half the residents of said palace disappear along with her.
This might not, technically, be a palace, but it's close enough for someone like Judau Ashta. He's used to places, at best, described as cozy. The most content he ever felt about his housing situation was living a vagabond's life in the Jupiter Energy Fleet. Something this large might as well be a palace. And the larger a palace is --
The more Judau feels it when it is emptier than it once was.
Maybe that's a strange thing; but it's how the young man from Shangri-La is wired. He doesn't feel comfortable in places like this -- and now, with Sayla gone, and so many others, he feels the weight of unused space and gravity resting on his shoulders. It's strangely isolating, in a way. Most days, when he wakes up, Judau spends that initial, groggy stretch of time in his and Roux's room, just sort of watching the outside world from their window and feeling the empty echo.
He's doing that, when he feels a twinge at the back of his brain, because he sleeps when he sleeps and he wakes when he wakes and sometimes that's two in the afternoon and don't judge him about that. Watching the sky beyond his window with wide, green eyes like he's just waiting for a stray bird to fly by, he feels it. A pang. A yearning.
A need.
"... Huh?"
Green eyes shutter in a blink. And Judau--
burps
and when two seconds pass and that doesn't sate the little itch at the back of his brain, he knows it's something more important.
The Burp Test: it never fails.
It's a fact that's well proven when he gets a text on his phone. Judau, not knowing where his phone actually is, rolls towards the edge of his bed and gropes the bedstand where it absolutely is not. "c'mon ffff" is his thoughts on that matter, teetering on the edge until --
"HOLY FUCK GRAVITY"
-=TMP!=-
he just sort of topples mutely off the bed.
THE UPSIDE: he hears a secondary sound of something reasonably hard hitting the floor too, and after about half a minute of swarming blindly within his collapsed covers groping around lamely, he finds his phone just in time for--
> i need to talk to you about something
> can you come down?
Judau's eyes widen and he instantly assumes something terrible is happening because Roux -needs- him--
Anyway that's the story of how Judau abandoned the lonely emptiness of the mansion/palace's second floor by sliding down the stairway's handrail until he's just far enough that he can jump off, hit the group in a running stumble, and sort of --
Rush all the way over to the room Roux is residing in at the moment in his Haro-emblazoned boxers, hitting the edge of the chair opposite Roux and just -barely- not toppling over as he declares --
"Are you okay?! The burp test failed!"
A second passes. He squints. He takes stock of the situation. He frowns, realizing things don't feel as grave as he thought, but serious enough that he can't just yell about being bamboozled. He lingers in this state for a little while, sort of half-leaning against the chair.
"... sup."
is ultimately what he comes up with.
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
He's coming.
Roux straightens up a little. It feels good. Warming. Hopeful; she isn't alone, she's not forsaken or caught as a single body in an orbit that she can't predict. There's a little banging and bumping, which Roux takes in stride because nobody's screaming and nothing broke and
Judau emerges into the sun room wearing his boxers and nothing else.
Roux's eyes go down south. Haro print. She raises the wine glass to her mouth and takes a swig, but that done, she looks up with a faint smile and says, "That's a little alarming, huh?"
Roux is, of course, aware of the burp test.
"Sit down, if you want," Roux says. "I'm sorry if I scared you." She says this while looking out the window, towards some scenic Spanish landscape. Swirling the wine (which is white, came from a fairly generous bottle, and probably - no definitely - "table" wine) she settles back in her seat, crossing her legs.
(Roux is wearing sea-green tights and a loose tunic-style shirt with clasps on the side, and a black sports bra to avoid, you know, what happens when you wear a tunic-style shirt with clasps on the side. For the record. No Haro print... that you can see...)
"I was thinking about the future," Roux says, "since Leina... she talked to me about some stuff, and I didn't want to just say yes or no to anything. And everything's changed, now, and it's changing even faster, and --" Roux lets out a little huff of a sigh, "I don't know what to *do*, you know??" It's kind of petulant, but age has clearly mellowed her because she didn't kick a chair.
"Because there's just all this SHIT and it's COMPLEX but it's not any, like, SAFER or anything, either," Roux continues, with frustration.
There is a red Abyssinan cat sleeping, satanically, in the obvious chair for immediate sitting. This is probably in part because the sun is shining elegantly inwards, and she has to power up for that bullshit she pulls at 2 in the morning when you're trying to go to the bathroom.
<Pose Tracker> Judau Ashta has posed.
That's a little alarming, huh?
"I mean, yeah," Judau says, scratching the back of his head. "It's the burp test."
Listen; how immensely powerful Newtypes process their gifts is different for each one and should not be treated any less seriously.
Case in point: even if it's not the life and death situation he was expecting (what was he expecting? maybe something like earth ninja invasion. how can roux manage to get out multiple text messages during an earth ninja invasion? long story.), Judau knows -something- is wrong. It's enough that it tempers what would usually lead to a bombastic moment of accusations flying every which way; thick brows furrow faintly as Roux continues on. And Judau even "pssshawwwww"s and flops his wrist around in the air dismissively as she apologizes.
"Nah, s'fine. I shoulda been gettin' up anyway."
Maturity! The power of empathy at work!
The ratcheting back of the alert level from BLACKWATCH PLAID does not, however, seem to include Judau feeling a need to go get changed -- nor does it particularly stop him from taking a detour after noticing that wine, leaning oooooover the chair towards the table it rests on to pluck it up before he moves to sit --
And then sees the cat.
He frowns. He considers. His usual tactic for dealing with this
FLASHBACKS OF JUDAU ASHTA, SHANG-ERA, TURNING A CHAIR UPSIDE DOWN TO REMOVE VAGRANT FERAL CATS
would probably be considered bad form for a house cat, and he has no idea what cats from Earth are actually capable of, but he -does- want to sit, so...
As Roux explains her difficult-to-form frustrations, she'll be treated to the sight of Judau Ashta, bottle in hand, gradually climbing UP onto the seat, until his feet are planted on the arms of the chair, and his ass on the back of it, in a sitting position he somehow manages to make look perfectly natural
as he chugs some wine straight from the bottle.
Look. If they didn't want you to drink wine from the bottle, they'd put it in something logistically more difficult to drink it from.
Like a box.
Despite all this, he is still listening: holding the bottle between his knees with both hands, he frowns as he considers what Roux's saying. He can guess, all things considered, what Leina talked to Roux about. All the same...
"You dunno if it's a good choice," he summarizes for Roux, head tilting. Because they've both been there. Here. Before. And the last time...
"What'd she ask?" And, goes unsaid,
What does Roux think of it?
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
Roux learned how to text in all situations on the mean streets.
The mean streets of her home colony's magnet high school for piloting and spacecraft operations.
The one with the hotbed of radical organizing. Even today, nobody knows where that Mekazawa guy went. Probably he's in the legislature for the AEUG now.
"Heh," Roux says. "Is it messing with you here? The air's just got... I don't know, texture, complexity. And it's dry here! It wasn't that dry in Shangrila, right? And of course on a ship it's all the same, and the Fleet colony was always that sort of nice Pendragon weather going on."
Buer opens an eye and looks directly at Judau. Ethereally, there is a small but discernible aura of red around the cat, but Judau then does not execute operation: Neko Wrath and Buer remains undisturbed. She attempts to go back to sleep, even as she is subjected to an eclipsing moon.
Judau picks up the wine bottle and swigs some Spanish table wine. It's pretty strong if not 'strip paint' strong - flavorwise, anyway - it's no more hooch-intense than any other wine. There's a reason the Romans watered it if they were doing serious drinking, of course. But he holds the bottle there, a hanging protruberance that Buer will surely notice in a minute.
"Yeah," Roux says.
"Well..."
Roux reaches up to swirl a lock of that soft blue-purple hair around a finger. "She told me about... a group she's with... and invited me. And... I think she'd invite you too, but..."
Roux tilts her head to the side. "I think it's a cult."
"However," her head tilts to the other side, "it doesn't sound like a BAD cult, and the benefits and everything sounded amazing. Even if she was kind of buttering me up, like even if I take seventy percent of what she said, it still beats what I was getting with the Londo Bell, *and* you kind of seem to make your own position!"
<Pose Tracker> Judau Ashta has posed.
Is it messing with him?
How best to explain it? Should he wax philosophical about the weighty chains of gravity on the soul? About how the fate of man lies in the stars? Or perhaps--
"It's too close to the ocean. I don't trust it. You ever seen a squid? With the beak? And the hooks? Fuck that."
Well, it's poetic in a certain light. Like a drunk one.
"S'all different. You go like just northeast of here and things get all humid an' crap, but you go to far south an' everything starts dryin' out, an' then you hit the coast an'..." Judau gestures vaguely. "Shit gets way too hot, too." A little less of a problem right -now-, but...
In a way, it's amazing. How there can be so much difference, so much variety, even in climate in a single country. And Judau does find that really remarkable, in his own way.
It's just all... a lot. And makes him wonder what more is out there when you get past the boundaries of Earth Sphere, or the solar system, or...
"Wait. Pendragon's got nice weather? But they're such assholes."
Also, weather doesn't work the way he wants it to on Earth.
(then again, rich assholes getting the good weather is actually pretty easy to grasp)
Roux works through the best way to approach the matter of the Shuffle Sex Cult with Judau. As she does, he pushes his thumbs on the neck of the bottle caught between his fingers, making it swing back and forth like the most unintentionally of cat-alarming pendulums. His expression scrunches a little, as Roux speaks.
'I think it's a cult.'
"What? ... And aren't all cults bad? Like. ... y'know, how some people get real weird about haros?"
Says the man in the haro boxers, gesturing vaguely.
ANYWAY: Judau bravely pushes past, freeing a finger to point Roux's way as he speaks. "You're talkin' about Leina's gambling ring thing, yeah?" NOTE: Judau knows it's not a gambling ring now*. It's just the most efficient way to categorize it in his mind at the moment. "I met some of 'em already. Some dicks were gunnin' after Leina for a--" he pauses "--NOT a smash an' grab job--" that really makes it sound like it was a smash and grab job "an' they swooped in to help her. In a goddamn submarine, Roux. Pretty sure a cult wouldn't have a submarine." That doesn't seem like a culty thing to do, to him.
"Anyway, we talked about it. They seem like... good people. Don't seem like they're with the Feds, or Zeon. An' Leina vouches for 'em, too." Which is more than enough for Judau. But his brows furrow. The swing of the bottle stalls, for a moment, as he considers the purple-haired woman across from him.
"You're not sure, even with all that, huh?"
* Judau is still PRETTY positive they do gambling and theft ring stuff on the side
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
"Squid have hooks?" Roux asks, vaguely troubled by this.
"But - yeah, you can just go on forever... we're not that far from the Sahara, you know, it's just kind of," Roux gestures south by southeast. "I thought about going back there some time, just to see, but... it's not exactly happy memories, is it?"
("Yeah, they like found the place in North America with the best weather and built their shit there. I guess it's good to be the Emperor.")
She shifts herself upwards as the sex cult matter is breached and is left floating out there. Buer opens one eye and looks upwards at the twinkling, shining object dangling pendulously over her head. Her tail lashes, once, without much sound.
"Not EVERY cult, I guess," Roux says. "Like the Hare Shaiva guys at the space port, they're not that evil, they're just annoying. Or those old guys from the movies, with the goat. What were they called? I remember Mondo mentioned them a couple of times. Illuminateds? Something like that."
"Leina made it sound like they're really ancient," Roux says with audible skepticism, "but I could buy that you could have something going on a couple of hundred years. Even in secret. Especially if you have rich people involved!"
A beat pauses.
Roux's eyes narrow. "What? She's - what the hell?? She's in a gambling ring?!"
Roux straightens upwards. "With a submarine!? Like a real submarine boat? Those are REAL?? I thought those were like, just... like they made them up for movies!! Or they used them in the like, ancient naval wars! What the *hell!*" Why is Roux so vexed by this? Is it because she doesn't believe in submarines? Is it because she wasn't invited to the underground gambling ring?!?
"Well... even if they're having orgies and running gambling rings, those are both things people actually enjoy," Roux says, if with some doubt.
A pause. Another pause. Buer bats at the wine bottle.
"They did seem like good people," Roux says.
"But I don't trust my feelings as much as I did," she continues, gazing into the wine glass. "And..."
"I should think about you too, right? I mean, I doubt you'd - complain, but..."
Her head turns, face flushing. "-- God! You know what I mean!" Concern; love; responsibility. A desire not to leave important people behind.
There is a very faint 'tink.' It's a good thing for Judau that that's a wine bottle.
<Pose Tracker> Judau Ashta has posed.
"Yeah I saw it in some Earth movie."
CUTAWAY TO MOVIE TITLED 'THE BEAKENING 3D(EEPENING)'
Judau Ashta nods firmly, filled of the wisdom of the ancients.
The one time where his outlandish methods of learning actually lines up with reality. Mostly.
Still, Roux explains the many striations of cults, and Judau - just about to lift the bottle to take another drink - pauses and squints. "The Illuminateds?" he asks, as if he finds something remiss with this. He frowns deeply. Deeply.
And then he lifts the bottle with incidentally taunting timing to take a long sip.
"Nah. They're evil; that's a dumb name," is the grounds of his objection as to how good that particular cult is. "Nobody's callin' themselves 'Illuminateds' who aren't total dickheads."
He is -certain-.
The bottle drops again, wine sloshing around and making the bottle -that much more- attention-grabbing as Roux starts to panic about Leina's involvement in a gambling ring. As she carries on, Judau watches her, blinking bemusedly. "Uh," he begins, about to correct her about the gambling confusion which is in no way his fault, but then Roux's pivoting to the submarine next. "I guess they're real, an' they're terrible, you gotta go underwater an' everything in 'em," not that he hasn't gone underwater with the zz before but that's different, the zz is very reliable "but Leina's not--"
Well... even if they're having orgies and running gambling rings, those are both things people actually enjoy.
There is a long pause afterward where Judau Ashta just stares at Roux like she ate an entire horse, before he just leans back a little and relaxes, having somehow entirely omitted the word 'orgy' from his mind. He sighs, assuming -that- whole problem has neatly resolved itself without him having had to expend any effort.
Just wait for it.
I should think about you too, right? I mean, I doubt you'd - complain, but...
The Young Man From Jupiter Sorta peers at Roux once again as she flushes and hems and haws. His head tilts.
"I mean, I'd be joinin' in too, Roux."
Continue waiting for it...
"... Look. I came back -- we came back because... it felt like we oughta do somethin' more, right? At least that's how I felt. How I feel. The way the world's goin', the things people are doin'... it's like what happened with us, what happened at Axis, didn't even matter. Like everything's just gettin' worse. An' if there's somethin' I can do about that, an' I don't..."
Judau's head drops, as he contemplates the bottle in his hands.
"... I couldn't live with that. This is where Leina is. Where our friends are. The Feds can't help; they're the problem. Zeon's always gonna be Zeon, an' our people aren't gonna be able to have a chance when they're still... fuckin' around with shitty old ghosts. This thing Leina's in, this Shuffle stuff -- maybe it's the way we can help. Maybe it won't be. But it'll let us get a better idea of what's goin' on, right? An' maybe while we're helpin' them, we can figure out what we oughta be doin'."
A second passes. He exhales, not used to talking so seriously for so long. Being an adult sucks.
"An' if it doesn't work out, if everything's not on the up and up, we just bail. Right? I'm with you to the end, Roux. One way or another."
He lifts that bottle again, and-- wait for it --
*tink*
The faintest sound of claws going for bottle rings in his ears, and Judau's eyes widen.
"WAIT WHAT THE FUCK ABOUT ORGIES?!"
there it is
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
"It'd be like being in a tiny colony and you'd be surrounded by salt water," Roux says, flatly. "Being crushed by the ocean while breathing everyone else's farts isn't my idea of a good time."
How is this different from the Argama? Answer: It isn't, really, but at least there wasn't the crushing pressure of the ocean depths.
But...
Judau begins to speak.
Roux glances over her shoulder, at first. And she turns to orient herself to face him, properly. Somewhere around that pause to contemplate the bottle, she turns a bit more, to put the glass down. Her lips press together a little but her eyes are softening. "... heh," she says, with mist in her voice and eyes.
"Alright. ... Thank you... I guess that settles it," Roux says, lowering her head.
There's a clink of a tiny cat claw against glass. And...
...
"I mean," Roux says, "I didn't HEAR about them, but I can read between the lines, Judau. You might not have been paying attention at the time, and I don't blame you because this was at Torrington, but I - *I* had to deal with that pervert woman!" Her eyes widen. "She was in like ten centimeter heels! She looked like the cover of a vibrator box! I think I saw her whip Argo Gulskii when he was *pulling a mobile suit into place*!"
This is surely an exaggeration. Argo Gulskii could probably wrestle a Mobile Suit's ARM but he couldn't pull the WHOLE thing.
Roux makes a vague gesture with one hand, "Anyway, I think she must be the one in charge of the mothership or whatever. That doesn't mean she's evil, it just means she's a perv. Pervs can be good people, you remember Hard Saber, right? The repair guy?"
A beat passes and a horrible thought crosses Roux's mind. As she paps one fist into her palm, "Is that who's BEHIND this? The perverts? Are they the ones who are going to bring the Federation down?" How much of that did she drink before Judau came down here?
<Pose Tracker> Judau Ashta has posed.
It's a sweet moment. The smile Judau offers Roux is genuine, without all the goofy frills of a young man who still just kind of wanders around houses in boxers even when he's just kind of staying there as a guest and doesn't even own the place.
It's a smile of sincere sentiment. Affection, even.
A sweet moment.
Too bad the sex cult has to ruin it with their mind tricks and their fetishes.
Which might also involve mind tricks.
Roux lays out her case. And Judau is both flabbergasted and deeply skeptical because like what, do they run the gambling rings around the orgies, and what would they even bet on in that case, staying power? It's all a lot to consider, just. Logistically.
But Roux makes a convincing case, what with the heels, and the vibrator box woman, and the whipping, and Judau's pretty sure he remembers seeing her and getting stranger danger vibes.
The hand holding the bottle slumps to the side, as Judau rubs his chin with his free hand, deeply and reasonably considering the very likely drunk Roux's argument with the same care and consideration he would reserve for a sober person. He knows Roux well enough to know when she's drunk. But she's really persuasive when she's drunk. It's a problem.
"Fuck. Right! Hard Saber!" Judau snaps his fingers. "It all makes sense!"
And everything just sort of falls into place, with that. Judau lets out a little "hah!" and raises that bottle to his lips. His sole assessment of whipping and ten centimeter heels and orgies is, "Huh. Cool," as he takes it all in, and drinks deep of that wine.
And then he remembers Leina is part of the Shuffle Alliance.
The drinking slowly trails off to a stop, a bit of white wine just kinda... trailing down to his chin as he just stares. Vacantly. Like his soul is leaving his body as Roux goes on further and further with ramping revelations. Everything goes numb. The world becomes mute. He can hear the dry wind crinkling through the leaves beyond the palatial estate of Sayla Mass.
Judau's stare is a thousand yard thing as he says,
"well. if someone's gonna. it's probably. gonna be pervs."
And drinks again, unblinking. Because he has a LOT OF QUESTIONS for LEINA ASHTA.
But also, Roux made a very good point about the Pervert Revolution.
God damn her drunken wisdom.