2023-01-31: Nameless Collision
- Cast: C.C., Shelby Korts
- Where: Area 11 - Ashford Academy
- Date: U.C. 0097 01 31
- Summary: C.C. elects to use her powers on Shelby for good, for once. and then for evil again
<Pose Tracker> Shelby Korts has posed.
The world has changed in the week and change that Shelby Korts has been in Japan -- and, as the Britannians have labelled this part of the country, Area 11. Tsutsujidai's return, missing people coming back, massive battles all over Earth and space. It's enough to give her a case of the Nerves, as much as she's loathe to admit it.
She's overdue for a session, she thinks to herself. Really, it would be nice to go home and talk to someone for a bit. Clear her head. Make sure she's not going a bit stir crazy on this trip. It would be nice to go hang out with Anser, too.
It's a little late for people to be working in the cafeteria, but being the visiting person, the young student, of course Shelby is the one that has to come in early and leave last-- especially after the dinner rush-- and, with her experience, it isn't too horribly, particularly exhausting.
With the sun setting and her job done for the day, however, the thoughts and noise of hundreds of rich and connected teenagers running roughshod through her mind-- *that* is where she finds some exhaustion. Near the front of the campus green, on a bench amidst the arches that decorate the school's courtyards, Shelby Korts sits with a chef's jacket-- too boxy and wide for her frame -- laid across the top of the messenger bag she wears, clutching her chunky, space-resistant phone in both hands.
There's music playing on the wireless earbuds she's wearing; some obscure punk band that You've Never Heard Of from the 0070s. Her eyes are closed, and she IS resting, but it's hard to say if she's actually asleep or just ... enjoying the moment alone.
<Pose Tracker> C.C. has posed.
Perhaps Shelby notices it by the slight sense of cooling from the shaded sun. Perhaps notices it from the ease with which the music shuts down even ambient voices nearby - though maybe that's just everyone heading on home. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
It's unknowable just how long C.C.'s been perched over Shelby (it's completely knowable actually - roughly 30 minutes) - before at last, she makes herself completely known - by reaching down and plucking out an earbud for her own assessment.
No lavish dress code today - she's in the usual Ashford Academy uniform, that waterfall of green tumbling down her back, amber eyes glistening, a gently catty smile on her lips.
"Hmmmmmm. Hard to tell which style this is. Remember hearing some stuff like this not too recently, but I also know bands that have this sort of style were popular in the 2100s..." A slight click of her tongue, glancing off towards the setting sun-
Before C.C. suddenly sweeps in close, riiiiight up - face to face - and takes a gentle little sniff of Shelby's cheek.
"Hooooh. You've been cooking something delicious, haven't you? Take me to where there's any leftovers."
<Pose Tracker> Shelby Korts has posed.
Maybe it's that the school is -- for all that it is and is not -- somewhat peaceful, in her stay. It has to be, given the type of people who go here; she always notes the presence of the local authorities and campus security and often does her best to stay strategically out of their notice as much as possible. But there's something about it here that just feels ... okay. Okay to just do *this*.
Of course, it ends up being a provable mistake, as in her half-dozed state, letting the music do it's work, she suddenly realizes-- with fingers slipping into her personal space and one of the earbuds yanked from her head-- that C.C. is just ... right there.
And she panics, just slightly, her body tensing sharply as her brain runs through a checklist, like a start-up sequence of sorts:
- She's awake.
- C.C. is *right there*.
- C.C. is critiquing her music.
- Oh god what the fuc--
Her hands move to catch the bench's seat to move away, but the green-haired witch is suddenly *right there* in her personal space, sniffing at the young woman's face. A slight reddening of her cheeks preceeds the breath hitching in her throat, and the young woman finally finds her voice:
"C-Can I help you?! I mean-- I'm not -- I was-- but the kitchen's closed, so-- it's-- um."
And then she fixes her glasses with a quick movement, and it processes, clicks--
It *is* C.C..
"... Oh."
<Pose Tracker> C.C. has posed.
Oh, it's clear that's not going to be enough. A gentle little pout crosses C.C.'s lips, one finger pressed to the very bottom of them. Softly parting.
"Hmmm. What a shame. Too nervous to accept escorting a fair maiden to her destination for appeasement. Very well, I'll just have to take it from somewhere else." Pivoting upwards, C.C. gives an elegant spin around, a curtain of hair tousling with her - - -
-giving Shelby a terribly provocative view in the process-
There's a motion like she plans to walk away, but it's a terrible lie. A bold faced lie! No. Instead, that hypnotically swaying lower half swishes once, befoooooooore - descending like a meteor right atop Shelby's waist, the witch making herself right at home sitting atop the pink haired girl.
"Been having fun, I take it? You and your adorably porous mind. Ah, I'm sure you've already noticed, but I'm being very generous right now and not letting things flow like water over you. While it'd be cute to listen to your thoughts drink in mine, I can tell when you're tired of being run across like a playground, so just this once I'll take it easy on you."
Shift shift. Nestle nestle. She's getting cozy here with that irresponsibly plushy backside of hers - just as much a weapon as her uncanny psychic acumen to Shelby...
BBSYS: Post 674, 'Two Weekends!' has been published to Vacations by Rena Lancaster.
<Pose Tracker> Shelby Korts has posed.
There's too much spooling through her mind at once: The fact C.C. is here. HERE?! That she didn't notice or feel the strange young woman, or the fact she had no *idea* that she was a student here, or even ... wait, her mind is ...
Shelby lets out a soft 'hff' as C.C. makes herself home on her lap. The pink-haired young woman's legs are muscular by comparison; though she's wearing plain black trousers meant for the kitchen, it does not negate the feel of someone who does a lot to train their legs.
This close, face to face, the scars are far more visible. Most are faded but still there; marks of skin at her hairline and on her upper arms, her forearms sheathed in tight-fitted black fabric with loops for her thumbs. Her brows knit, shifting her thigh a bit to shove her phone back into her pants pocket.
"A-Am I supposed to thank you?" she asks, trying her best to put on a bit of bravado. Getting caught off-guard like this is ... it's just unacceptable! "What are you even doing here? You don't seem the school type."
<Pose Tracker> C.C. has posed.
Slowly, C.C. kicks her legs, working that blessed bottom atop Shelby's lap in a comforting oscillation. Sinking and molding against the shape of Shelby's legs - isn't this a little too-
Suddenly, C.C.'s fingers are tracing some of the slightly more obvious scars, especially those on the bespectacled girl's face. She has a keen eye for even those faded away, it seems.
"Hmmmmm? Why, I'm none other than the mysterious Zaftran exchange student known as Cyzarine here. You're right, I'm not the school type - but it turns out a number of interesting and important people are. Don't get me wrong for a second though. I'm hardly attending classes or anything. Not unless there's some added amusement to be had from them."
The silence surrounding C.C. is almost uncanny. It's 'forced' somehow. Muffled, in a way - the feeling of being kept in a bubble underwater. Maybe it will pop at any moment, and the sea would come rushing back in.
"How about you, Shelby? Up to anything enjoyable here? You seemed very worn out, so I'll certainly make myself cozy here for a while if you want to go back to sleep. Think of me as a safety lock to ensure you don't get stolen.~"
<Pose Tracker> Shelby Korts has posed.
The scars C.C. touches are all memories -- things she would rather forget, but they are burned thoroughly into her mind forever; a permanent reminder of the things that had been done to her and her mind... that her powers are now broken, her mind opened like a floodgate. Twinges of color sit at the young newtype's scalp; a tiny twinge of fiery red at the roots of the pink. Her eyes, vividly blue behind those large black-rimmed glasses.
A flickering stray thought of a girl alone in a long hallway, hair as red as flickering flame, clutching her IV stand tightly with one hand.
And then there's C.C., again.
The muted silence is different from Yuliana -- there's no distortion of the Noise, no feeling like the whole universe is being pulled counter-clockwise around the woman and the raging singularity that is her Void. No infinity between the edge and the angry touch of the REA pilot's hand on the pink-haired young woman's wrist.
The muted silence is different from the time she had been to Tsutsujidai -- there's no crushing silence in a sea of bodies with a single mind to latch on to. She's not accidentally bumping into people as though she couldn't see... though in a very real way, it was like one of Shelby's senses were shrouded.
The muted silence is different--
Different.
All at once, C.C. -- Cyzarine -- feels like predator and Cheshire all at once, in a way she can't quite explain or fathom. Shelby finds her voice after a moment, her mouth in a firm line. "I'm just resting. Before I go home. I'm getting work experience in the kitchen." It's mostly a lie, but still couched in the truth.
"I-I'll be fine, thank you," she says after a moment, a little bit of red coloring her cheeks.
The young newtype sucks in a deep breath, trying to look C.C. squarely in the eyes with some degree of focus.
"Who are you, really?"
<Pose Tracker> C.C. has posed.
Even 'restraining' herself, things can't hold back. It isn't just that things flow 'into' Shelby's mind easily...things are flowing out of it too, and right into C.C.'s vision.
Her baleful amber irises gaze just a little deeper. Trying to grasp who this red-haied entity might be - but it soon fades away, behind barriers of pain and difficulty. She knows well that chasing her down the hallway could break Shelby here and now - - -
She's broken people that way before, after all.
Mercifully, another little 'layer' to the bubble soon drifts in, and the calming, soothing silence finally is complete. A shield protecting Shelby's heart from others - a shield protecting others from Shelby's heart. Miraculous witchcraft - done merely on an amusing little whim.
The witch's posture reconfigures. Instead of sitting perpendicularly, soon Shelby has a full view of that green waterfall of hair - and C.C.'s outright laying atop her like she would splay across a couch, lazily and placidly. "Hmmm. Who am I, after all that's happened. Hehehe. I come up with these names to help people not have to ask that. When I don't have to make a boundary like that, people know me simply as C.C., which arguably tells you less than before."
Rolling over, elbows pressed into Shelby's shoulders, finally relieving the aura of oppression her hips have over the pink-haired girl. Chin in her hands, face inches from Shelby's, eyes balefully lidded.
"Some might call me an incorrigible witch. Some might call me a wise sage. And plenty more are happy to dismiss me as a troublesome nuisance. Usually, that depends on what they want me to be."
<Pose Tracker> Shelby Korts has posed.
A ghost? A memory? Something lingering deep inside?
Shelby's hand shifts, clenching tightly as she continues to keep a shockingly careful eye on C.C. and her antics, the way she twists and moves. The muffled noise-- the pressure, on the edge of her senses suddenly smooths out. All is silent and calm.
Her eyes drift *away* from the witch then, like she's looking around in confusion. There's ... nothing. Her heart can't feel, but her mind is still scuttling around, listening, wide open and hearing nothing. It *is*, a strange sensation, one marked by the way Shelby's face moves from confusion to curiosity.
It feels wrong, but ... it doesn't 'hurt'? It doesn't feel horrible, or strange, or offputting. More importantly, her name is C.C..
Inches apart, eyebrows knit, Shelby looks like a person trying to fit all the pieces together. Witch, sage, something ... different than a newtype. Something strange, and unusual. Something powerful.
Something different, just like her.
"There's power in names," Shelby finally says. "Just knowing them ... it's... it can be significant. I-I think."
Her eyes drift aside, glasses sliding down her nose a little. She's trying very, very hard to assert an air of control in the face of an utter chaos elemental. "B-Besides, I can't be stolen."
<Pose Tracker> C.C. has posed.
"No, you're spot on," C.C. muses, rumbling her dulcet tones just inches from Shelby's lips, and not far from her ears. Slowly, the glasses are pushed back up by the witch's ring finger. "To know a name is to know someone. To give them a space, an identity discrete from others. Someone's name turns them from feelings that you've had, into a spirit all their own. If there's any part of us that 'lives on', it's our names."
"To have your name taken away, then, is to be purged from that which comes after. The same goes for if you've given it up voluntarily."
Folding her hands under her chin, resting them on Shelby's sternum, the rapidly en-catting witch gazes up at her. . . what exactly is she treating Shelby as. A couch? Couch is a good word for that. At her couch's face from below.
"...Your name. Is it something held dear, or is it something you use to get by?"
</poem>
<Pose Tracker> Shelby Korts has posed.
The young woman's head slants a bit, thinking about that for a moment. Is it held dear? What is it for her? She frowns slightly, a hand coming around to adjust her glasses just slightly, just so, in a way to make her feel like she has some sort of control over this chaos.
"The scars."
"I lost my memories in the lab. Whatever they did to me, it... messed up my head. I kept trying to remember my name but all I could get out was something that sounded like 'Shelby.' So, it... stuck." Memories; flits and flickers of Rita Bernal in her mind, other kids in varying states of mind-mess and experimentation.
That red girl.
"I gave up trying to find my past, so I'm using it for the future."
<Pose Tracker> C.C. has posed.
In the same frames as that crimson apparition, a green one intrudes, making herself just as solid. 'Touching' that faded memory in red. Seeing if she can divine anything from if she was within this space - sharing these footsteps.
But it's just too unstable ground to stand on. This earth is made of vapor - these figures are lights in the sky. C.C. can't reach for that red girl just as she can the stars in the sky to try and find a name from the constellations.
"I suppose we're more similar than anticipated," C.C. concludes, her flat expression gently falling to a frown. "Reach for a future long enough, though, and names become a tool. A means to an end. Don't think too much about what I mean claiming myself as the lavish deposed noble, the most elegant and darling Cyzarine. It's as real a name as I decide it is in any given moment. Or rather - it's so openly fake that it's a reality of its own. I'm 'the one who's obviously lying about who she is'."
A moment of quietness in this mental bubble, C.C. treating Shelby's space as a bonsai to be carefully pruned and sheltered from the wind, leaving it be for a bit, save for the sense that she's...absolutely not giving Shelby's thoughts privacy. A silent eye seems to hover over flickers of memory - but at least it's quiet. Until finally, the silence breaks.
*growl*
"...You seem to have forgotten that I was asking you to lead me to the lunch earlier." Petulant wiggling of her hips atop Shelby's thighs. "I still smell the food on you. I've been very generous to you and very polite. Do reward me."
<Pose Tracker> Shelby Korts has posed.
Being in that space is cold. That space is empty.
Only in the moment do the pieces fit together; for her, for C.C. -- and it's hard to say if Shelby even perceives it as a thing that exists. That it's happening at all. That green steps in a space that feels like it's made of mosaic glass, sensitive and fragile and held together with string.
Infinite, vast, and ... oppressively quiet. But, it's just a moment, lest she push further.
A means to an end, her name is. The newtype's eyes drift from side to side as she considers what that means to her, and the lies C.C. tells for her own purposes. She doesn't feel like she's being told any lies, either; her emotions hard to just properly fit into any one box. "I... don't have anything to lie about."
For her part, Shelby parts her lips slightly and sucks air through her teeth, brow scrunched. C.C. starts to wiggle, and the pink-haired young woman lets her head slacken backward so that she can briefly stare at the sky.
"God. Fine."
Lowering her chin to look back down at the chaos witch, she extends an arm toward her messenger bag, pulling out a plastic container, fingers rustling around more for a plastic fork in a wrapper. "I have some leftover lunch, if you want it."
<Pose Tracker> C.C. has posed.
C.C.'s nose is already peering into Shelby's container before it's even unwrapped. "Hm hm hm. Leftovers? I could've sworn I thought you had in-roads to the serving staff here. You could've been a golden ticket for me. But this will do, I suffice. Show me what you've got, won't you?"
...The witch can't help but snicker once, though - then laughing a little bit over herself, covering her lips. "You don't have anything to lie about, Shelby? You're adorably silly."
"Everyone who's ever lived has had a lie somewhere important in their heart. You could say a 'person' is a story wrapped around the biggest lie you need to tell to survive. A lie that works its butt off to become true."
"But that's alright, isn't it?" C.C. muses, a wriggly catty squirm that sinks her shoulder into Shelby's chest, the side of her head planted to Shelby's heart. "But that's okay, isn't it? Be too 'true', and you vanish like a puff in the wind. The truth undoes the world, so we build it on lovely stories that make tomorrow something to get up for."
<Pose Tracker> Shelby Korts has posed.
Inside the container, a carefully portioned and sliced-up piece of breaded garlic chicken parmesan and some pasta; it does not look like standard kitchen fare for Ashford, and like something she had taken personal pains to make in her own time. There are a lot of personal flourishes, even, things that set it apart from the standard Ashford Academy fare: the seasoning, the salt, how even the crumbs are-- is that homemade sauce, even?
This weirdo pilot really knows what she's doing.
"I--"
Shelby frowns; she can't ... she doesn't *know* what to say, and it becomes increasingly obvious from the way she can only stammer and fluster with her words while C.C. settles in.
"... Yeah. I guess. ... Maybe? I don't know." She frowns, looking down and away.
<Pose Tracker> C.C. has posed.
Oh now this is rewarding.
"I knew it. I knew it all along. The thing that called you to me is this impeccable talent at cooking," C.C. makes up entirely from thin air right this second, flashing Shelby her most endearing little smile and helping herself to forkful after forkful, mogu-moguing with all the grace and elegance in the world considering how ravenously she eats. "I could smell - aumf - your talent even from - aumf - as far away as opposing - aumf - ends of a tempestuous conflict. Aumf."
Her lower half wiggles like a fish through the sea at each hunger-sating bite, pausing with over half of the bounty already imbibed, worrying her lips around the fork and gazing balefully into Shelby's eyes. "Well. Don't take what I say as any sort of judgment of you. It's always a bit of a hassle when a little thing like words is what brings someone down, but maybe it's only because I've heard them all before. If it's easier to communicate through the wonders of cooking than it is through anything we talk about, I think I'm satisfied with a relationship like that."
<Pose Tracker> Shelby Korts has posed.
She eats with all the aggressive fervor that Shelby had expected. She lets out a soft 'snrk' of a laugh, elbow pulling up to rest on the back of the bench and hand half-clad in black compression fabric coming to rest on the back of her neck. "I work at a burger joint. But I've learned a lot while travelling. I take a lot of trips. I sometimes have to make extra for my nosy neighbors," she says, though the last part has an affectionate twinge.
She doesn't note the part about her credentials being forged. Nor what her real goal is here. But -- at the very least, for her, the chaos elemental seems to be pleased with her cooking. "That's good, I guess. I'm not always good at talking."
Vibes? Check. Thoughts? Absolutely. And then, after a moment, she shakes her head, looking defeated-- amused, but defeated.
"You're a strange person, C.C."
<Pose Tracker> C.C. has posed.
"...I've worked quite a few places in my life, but I can't say I've ever been made to cook. It's a dreary process to me, but your mastery of it is impressive and captivating," C.C. concedes, polishing off eeeeevery last bite of Shelby's leftovers - before finally, FINALLY - freeing her acquaintance from the oppression of her seating position, standing upright with arms wide and a slow little spin.
"Luckily, you've passed most of my tests with flying colors. With fortune, it's been as refreshing for you as it has been for me. Sadly, your world might be getting a bit louder when I go - perhaps you'll call me 'strange' right now, but realize how much you miss having me around." One step back after another - the witch points upwards to the clock upon campus - which dings and dongs almost as if on cue from her discretion.
"In a way, that heralds our shared time being up. But when I need to find you, I'll know where to go."
The clock's conclusion heralds the world slowly becoming noisier again, from the errant thoughts of others.
...and somehow, in the span of gesturing to that clock, C.C. has already vanished before Shelby looks back...