2023-01-21 - Veil of Illumination
- Cast: Teletha Testarossa, Kaname Chidori
- Where: Captain's Room, Tuatha de Dannan
- Date: U.C. 0097 01 21
- Summary: A Whispered calls on another Whispered to explain their output, and tensions reach a boiling point.
<Pose Tracker> Teletha Testarossa has posed.
The Tuatha de Dannan, like any ship meant for combat, needed to be repaired and restocked eventually.
Services rendered on a port supported by the Shuffle Alliance, with the usual "port hidden under a port" schematic used the world over. In the hangar, people milled about; Repairmen, technicians, checking up on the multi-million (perhaps billion) ship that was the prize ship of Mithril's naval forces.
It was this semi-hurried atmosphere that Tessa waiting in her office, sighing out and fiddling with a pen on her desk. Spinning that writing instrument in between her digits, a small pause whenever that attempted finagling had the pen fly off one way or another.
Given her current state of mind, that pen was accruing frequent flyer miles on a greater basis than usual.
Regardless, Tessa sent over that invitation for a one-on-one to Kaname. Whispers were WHispers, and having something like this was...promising.
<Pose Tracker> Kaname Chidori has posed.
To say it's been an eventful week is an understatement.
For someone in Kaname Chidori's position, it's been a nightmare. Most of her tenure as Heart-2 has been in a sort of maintenance capacity--even as situations have evolved on the ground, nothing's been quite big enough to require large action.
But then the Macross 13 attempted a coup against the King of Britannia, its captain's death leaving more questions than answers--and mere days afterward, the Earth Federation invades Orb--a sovereign and neutral nation--under flimsy pretenses. From her position, Kaname can see the ripples beginning to spread. Action needs to be taken.
An invitation to a meeting with Teletha Testarossa, then, is a breath of fresh air compared to the nexus of military and political intelligence that is her office. Even if this IS the girl she kissed at a sleepover...
She walks the halls of the de Danaan escorted by a burly, crew-cut South Britannian man in uniform. He doesn't speak a word until he's rapped on the bulkhead door to the captain's office. "Heart-2 here to see you, ma'am."
Once received, Kaname steps through the hatch, her cheeks visibly pink. "Captain," she greets curtly--a little reserved, really. She even gives a salute.
<Pose Tracker> Teletha Testarossa has posed.
Tessa is looking no worse for the wear...If that someone was looking with no glasses. Granted, she's putting up the veneer well enough; A bright smile as she saluted back, her posture visibly relaxing as soon as Kaname's escort left. Yet, there's the slight sigh in her voice, the minute hint of dark bags that makeup nearly covered, the way her arm slumps dwn that bit more than usual at midday.
It has been an eventful week, and the TDD-1 has paid its price for participating in it.
"Heart-2. Take a seat, please." The small shuffle of papers off to the side, ones consisting of various reports across the globe. All accessible by Heart-2's own network; There's nothing here she hasn't seen before. "Haa...How are you holding up? I admit I wasn't keeping a close eye on Orb, but we were occupied."
The piece of paper that held Kaname's scribbles was on the other side of the desk, the scribbles as plain as that night.
<Pose Tracker> Kaname Chidori has posed.
Kaname can see the exhaustion on Tessa's features well enough, and she manages to relax as she sits. "... Surviving," she breathes, slumping a bit. "This feels too big for me. Everything feels like it's on the edge, and it feels like a struggle just to keep up with the reports right now." The bags under her eyes are less concealed than Tessa's, today. She looks like she hasn't been sleeping enough.
"What about you? I heard the de Danaan took a massive hit," she continues, concerned, eyes fixing on the page.
"Is this..." She reaches over toward the paper. "The, uh... 'whisper' I had at Leina's sleepover?"
There's still so much she doesn't understand... maybe tonight, she'll get some answers.
<Pose Tracker> Teletha Testarossa has posed.
"Both things taking place within the same week...The oil was always there, but people are deliberately lighting everything on fire now." Have to keep going. Have to keep moving forward. No matter what.
"Ah..." She casts her head down, looking away. Ah, yeah. That. "We got hit by the Macross 13's main cannon. I'm glad everything's okay, and the replacement parts are all just regularly sourced, but..." A deep breath in, a deep breath out. "We made it, and that's what matters." The hand on her desk trembles, scrunching up to a fist.
A deep breath once more.
"Yeah. I think I understand the basics, but what do you make of it, Kaname? No one knows a blueprint better than the one who drew it."
<Pose Tracker> Kaname Chidori has posed.
Kaname browses the page, and knowledge bubbles up as if from memory. There's no fugue, this time.
But she knows it.
"This is..." She frowns thoughtfully. "It's an iteration on the Minovsky Craft system. It's... not quite complete here," she scratches at the back of her neck awkwardly, "But the *idea* is to allow for I-field-based propulsion, by applying the magnetic confinement principles used in micro-fusion reactors. The modern version of the system is basically ground effect, like a hovercraft, but... in principle, this should allow for directional thrust and true atmospheric flight."
Kaname Chidori blinks once, then twice. She looks up at Tessa.
"Did. Did I just say all that? How did I..."
She probes her own thoughts, again, as her eyes turn back to the paper. Walks herself through the logic, through the physics. The image of an idealized prototype, crudely sketched out on the page, manifests in three perfect dimensions in her mind.
She screws her eyes shut. "What the fuck."
<Pose Tracker> Teletha Testarossa has posed.
Tessa remains silent during the explanation. Watching Kaname's eyes, staring at her face. No nosebleed. No fugue source, no form of loss of consciousness on that face...That face that she stares at, those eyes that're scanning the page, those cheeks that curve to those lips...Those...Lips...
...How long has she been staring, exactly? It takes a beat for Tessa to notice that Kaname was looking at her, questioning. Silent, thankful for Kaname's own return to the paper. She knows this. The process between vomiting something out on paper, putting it down, looking at it, and knowing.
And not knowing how you know was the part that invited the sense of dread if one wasn't aware.
"The same thing happened in Khanka, didn't it? Knowing without knowing." A hand out to take the paper, looking over it once more. "...Truth be told, this is a very generalized design. Mithril already looked at it and they're in the process of putting together a proof of concept." ...Her brow furrows. How much to say? How much to offer as someone "afflicted" by the same worms, and as someone who, technically, is supposed to be out of the know about all this?
...It's frustrating. The smallest bit. Even if she knew that she couldn't, she can't just...not help someone who's clearly going through the intital stages.
"I'm still not at liberty to say exactly what's going on, but things like these are why Mithril wants to protect you." Protect us. "After Pendragon and Orb, if they managed to snag this technology..." A sigh. It was too late for herself. "Many more would definitely die."
<Pose Tracker> Kaname Chidori has posed.
Kaname nods slowly as Tessa explains that Mithril is working on a proof-of-concept, and bites her lip in brief thought. "I... know this inside and out. More than I could write down. I understand the principles perfectly... just like in Khanka, but. More vivid. I just... I know it."
Not at liberty.
Of course she isn't.
She knows how this works. She knows why--everyone that knows it is a pair of lips that could speak it, to say nothing of the possible dangers having that knowledge might cause.
But she's spent the better part of a year, now, filling notebooks with things she shouldn't know or understand, spent a year under the protection of a thick-skulled soldier (leaving aside that she had a crush on him). A year orbiting and crossing into a world of secrets.
A year of not understanding anything about what she is, despite being pursued for it.
She's at her wit's end, and she's had enough.
"Goddammit," she mutters, pinching the bridge of her nose. "That's all you've ever told me. You're not at liberty... well, I've got goddamn notebooks full of high-level physics bullshit I doodled during classes! I was shoved in a glass tube in Khanka and they showed me some shitty VR movies, said I was 'Whispered', and then I got shot at! We nearly DIED out there! Do you have any idea what this has been like for me?! After everything I've been through, I think I have a right to know--"
She slaps the paper down on the desk, rising to her feet, both hands on the desk. "What the FUCK am I?!"
<Pose Tracker> Teletha Testarossa has posed.
The strain of saying that she couldn't say anything. She knows. It's a primal understanding; Locked up in secrecy and conflict, where knowledge itself is an attractor, and where someone knowing about it put others at risk for something they can't even comprehend. It's protocol. Pure, simple protocol that makes sense.
If word leaks out, the balance of power shifts.
Yet because of that, people aren't allowed to know who they are.
And to be denied to know who they are...
Under the desk, Tessa grips her own leg tight. In the back of her mind, there was always a question of wondering. Of waiting. When would the headstrong, assertive, bullrushing gal that she's learned to know for over a year finally ask the obvious?
It sticks out. A question. Does she have any idea? Any idea of what? Any idea of how? Any idea at all?
"...Do I have any idea what it's like?" She refuses to back down from that gaze. That instinctual opposition of up to down, the angle of dealing with someone who's saying they've had enough. Unfortunately, this was not the first time someone complained about orders. Those first few months...
"...Do I? Do you think I don't know, Kaname?" A white knuckle grip on her leg. Those ashen grey eyes working themselves. "Shot at? Nearly died? You don't think I know? What its like to hear bullets near you? What it feels like to have an explosion knock you fifty feet against a tree? You don't think I can't tell that it's eating away at you, Kaname? Do you take me for an idiot? Do you think I'm here because I'm that special? That special girl with a submarine? We're just unlucky enough to be at the right place at the right time with the wrong reasons." Her eyes. There's an emotional crack. The shine of something within. She's trying to take a deep breath, to fiddle with her braid.
Her hand is trembling too much to grasp that thick line of emotional support.
"You don't think I want to tell you? Kaname, look at me right in the eyes and say that. You don't think I want to say everything? That I can't just say that you don't have a right to know? That what's happening to you is just the start?" She's standing up. That hand shifting to the desk, to grip it tight. Frustration. Anger. The bottle of emotions, it cracks, it strains, the cap of suppression giving away just the tiniest bit. "We have the documentation. The tests. The results. I can't do anything on my own about it. I can't ask them to say anything because they have the results of those risks." Of what happens when someone like her digs too deep into what makes them special.
"I can't say anything because Mithril is protecting you from yourself. That's as much as I want to say. As much as I can say." Her words are hard. Forged in the steel of attempted confidence and the strain of everything in the past year. The fingers scratch at the desk. Her grip is white. Pale. "Please." She makes a motion.
How many times has her brain screamed out that this deja-vu is happening? How many times has she scratched the desk, gripped her chair, watched Kaname stand up and ask the same thing? Every movement is old and new at the same time, the brain's insistence, the Whispering that traps her in seeing everything as happening on loop and moving at the same time.
How many times has she made that simple motion? To lean in, to rest that hand (that trembling, trembling, trembling, trembling, trembling, trembling, trembling, trembling, trembling, trembling, trembling, trembling, trembling, trembling hand) on Kaname's own.
And grip it tight. Those eyes are brimming. The wave of complex emotions that even she can't try to separate.
"Help me with this. Please. Please don't ask anymore for now."
Bani is gone.
Sousuke is missing. Missing.
My brother...
There's Leina, helping her on the path.
There's Emilia, a gal that a misunderstanding is blooming about.
There's others.
And yet.
I can't bear to see you disappear, Kaname Chidori.
"Just that, I ask of you."
<Pose Tracker> Kaname Chidori has posed.
Kaname yells, and Tessa yells back.
Of course Tessa knows. Of course she's gone through the same things. They're the same.
How thoughtless of her, to think it was any other way.
Kaname's shoulders slump as she takes her weight off the desk. As Tessa grips her hand, she looks down. Tessa can feel Kaname's trembling as well. With fear of the unknown, with anger at how she's been kept in the dark, with...
"It's just... so much..." she says quietly.
"I'm sorry." She looks up again, into Tessa's eyes. "I'll trust you."
Her other hand moves to rest on atop Tessa's, and squeezes gently.
<Pose Tracker> Teletha Testarossa has posed.
It's so much. The past year has been so, so much.
That hand keeps trembling a bit less. She's gripping Kaname's hand tight, trying her best to stay steady for another. The rock in the whirlpool, the spiral of encounters, trials, and tribulations that so ground away at two teenagers who deserved nothing more than dinner and a good night of sleep.
"I know." It's just so much. "Believe me when I say I know."
Trust. Just. Trust.
Her shoulders slump the slightest on that other hand. "...Haa...Thank you." ...A deep breath. It's just. Something that needs to be taken care of eventually. Understanding is enough for now.
"Can I offer you some tea? I managed to get some packs while I was helping with filming on the island."