2023-02-09: Th-Roux-put
- Cast: Koji Kabuto, Roux Louka
- Where: Fujinomiya City - Fuji Photon Therapy Spa and Hot Spring Hotel
- Date: U.C. 0097 02 04
- Summary: After the raid on the Institute for Continuing Study, Roux takes a break at Fuji to get her head together, and talk to Koji about strange developments in her Newtype talents. Set before 2023-02-05: Black Unicorn
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
So, that happened.
How very glib. A dive into the heart of bloody darkness, a half-dissolved embolism in the brain of the REA. A raid, in other words. One which probably could have used someone more professional doing it, but the problem wasn't exactly military force.
Roux went into the 'Institute of Continuing Study' and she came back out. The group left with more people than it arrived with, so you could call everything a success, and Roux found in the immediate aftermath that she was -- fine! Keeping everything up, you know? It was rough, but hey, what wasn't?
This was not her appraisal for the whole time.
So, she sent an old friend, esteemed scientist KOJI KABUTO, a message:
> hey I'm going to be in fujinomiya again in a day
> do you want to get coffee?
> i will be honest for vibes here that i kind of need to talk to someone
> but
> i promise
> 50% max weird stuff!
Was it good? Perhaps it was good. Roux apparently had booked a two day stay at an in-town spa-and-hotel which had built out over Traditional Local Spa Therapies and was probably 90% a bunch of hogwash and 10% stuff that maybe is going to be on trend, and so the coffee shop is within walking distance of it.
Roux lingers in the quaint and chill (but not chilly) seating area, wearing her habitual vaguely flowy colony-style fashions with the accents of 'boot/legwarmer combo... thingies, because it is too cold to do the footwraps-and-thin-sandals thing on Earth this time of year' and a generically bland coat, so generically bland she almost certainly bought it to avoid freezing her keister off.
As she waits, she is flipping through the exotic coffee beverage options on a phone menu.
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
While Roux and many others challenged Earthbound manmade horrors beyond comprehension, Koji helped a team of aces demolish spaceborne manmade horrors entirely within comprehension. Still, being at ground-zero to a nuclear-scale detonation followed by the catastrophic collapse of a superweapon such as GENESIS is the kind of thing that has doctors looking at you very closely for a while.
Fortunately, the Photon Power Research Institute comprises many specialists in exotic materials and energies, so it didn't take long for them to give him a clean bill of health, so he's available to respond to Roux's invitation.
He shows up in his usual casual dress - white longsleeve turtleneck shirt, jeans, and an olive-green jacket. Motorcycle helmet tucked under one arm, he nods to the receptionist (who immediately goes the bright pink of 'local city hero just walked into MY establishment' and heads over to drop into the chair next to Roux.
"Pretty nice place," he allows. "A little bit of a tourist-trap, maybe, but it is right on the side of Fuji, they earned it." He grins, before adopting a more serious expression. "What's eatin' you, Roux?"
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
Roux looks over and her face brightens. She straightens up, beaming.
And the beam fades a little. "What do you mean a tourist trap?" Roux asks, with a ghost of a pout, but it passes. "Hmm... well, if you want me to rush right into my feelings..."
Roux flips through the phone menu, gesturing at the scan code on the tabletop. "I'll order for you for your trouble, if you want," Roux says, vaguely distracted, or perhaps focused elsewhere than the coffee, "my treat and everything. I did ask you to come out here..." Of course, presumably Koji lives around here. Who is the commuter here, Roux Louka?
"I should be asking you, I guess," Roux muses. "I mean, you were sort of in the thick of it, weren't you? Do you think that the Federation's going to take their ceasefire and mean it?" DIREST TREASON. Probably a fair question. Roux also plugs in her own order, which seems to be some kind of African coffee with - berry puree?
Resting her chin on her knuckles as she settles back into the chair, leaning a bit to one side, Roux says, "I just wanted to talk to someone who isn't going to be doing a bit, you know? And I wanted to come back to something familiar, but where I wouldn't have to take care of anyone for once." Her eyes lift upwards. "Do you ever get that?"
"I'm guessing you... know about everything, or at least most everything, from 'that place,'" Roux concludes. If the offer is taken she keys in Koji's order, and otherwise with the addition of some coffee-confection-dusted mochi for sides, she submits the request.
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"I'm just messing around. With the spa across the corner they probably make money hand over fist. Yeah, if you're offering to pay, then..." Koji isn't Judau, so at least Roux can feel at ease that he's not going to impoverish her in one terrifying sitting of devouring everything this place has to offer.
"You said you wanted to talk and it sounded serious," he says. "I'm not really one for beating around the bush if there's a problem, especially with my friends. Besides, if we talk about it first, we've got more time for hanging out after without it hanging over us, right?"
"Mm. The ceasefire." He drops his voice a little. "I can't imagine old man Yumi - " (A very disrespectful way to refer to the Prime Minister of Free Japan - if you don't know that Koji basically considers the man a surrogate father, so 'Yumi-oji-san' is actually a term of high esteem from him) " - isn't gonna push to keep the ceasefire going as long as possible, but BC are almost certainly going to be re-arming under cover. Still, with the major accelerationist faction in the PLANTs dead or locked up, the pressure to get back to a war footing is a little less, and that's something to cherish."
"I've... read some of the reports, seen the news. Unfortunately, it was while I was on the post-mission anti-rads, so it was hard to tell if it was that or the content that was making me throw up." He glowers. "Bastards. It probably won't take, but I'm gonna talk with Sayaka about kicking up a storm about it."
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
Roux tips in what Koji wants, and she smiles, but perhaps with a touch of... roux-fulness in her expression. She lets out a breath. "That's not a bad thought," she says, before the rest comes up.
OLD MAN YUMI. It feels strange. She saw him on TV. She was next to his daughter. Sayaka's like a princess, Roux thinks; an actual one, not all the weirdos in Britannia. She watches Koji as he lays things out, though she frowns slightly at the mention, however unpleasant, of Blue Cosmos.
"God," Roux says. "You're like... I feel like if I was in ZAFT I could look at what you say, and then say 'we should rearm too.'" Her eyes turn back down to her knees and she sighs.
"Jeez. How heavy were the rads? I only saw reports - I guess I was, uhm, lucky that I was on the wrong side of Earth for it...? It's weird to consider. You think of Earth as fragile, right? Like it's delicate and sensitive, a treasure... you know what I mean, right? I don't want to be all Ereist about it. But then you're like, well, just go into the storm shelter, right? Thirty centimeters of lunacrete beats everything."
"But you can't do that for the planet," Roux concludes. She glances out towards the window, towards the street.
"... I've been having weird, like, experiences," Roux says. "I don't know who to talk to them about. Who to talk about them with," she corrects herself. "I guess I wanted to talk to someone who... I mean, I can kind of get the feeling across, right? But..."
She trails off. Her hand, having lifted up to make some airy gesture, sort of hangs there.
"Maybe you can give me a guess on if I'm just hallucinating."
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
Koji grunts. "You're not wrong. We're pretty much neighbours with the Occupation border, and I'm sure they're doing the same shit." If the OCU are in turn building up their strength in preparation for the future, he won't say - even among friends, in a public setting like this there's no way he'd sell Shiro out.
"It's the smart thing to do if you know you're not dealing with rational actors, and BC certainly ain't that. Still - with the recorded confession of Rau Le Creuset about how he collaborated with them to make the war worse for both sides? They're gonna find it harder to do that for at least a little while."
"Well, if it had been a normal detonation, the safe zone wouldn't have been enough, but the weapon was designed to... concentrate the radiation to make the beam that hit Tenchu, so it didn't stick around long enough to be a major problem until we managed to sabotage the firing mechanism, at which point it just kinda melted itself into exploding. It was a pretty rough few days afterwards, though." Koji's casual manner in describing that is indicative of him being used to spending days, sometimes over a week, in traction after a bad kikaiju fight.
"Hmm. Headspace stuff? I'd say talk to Kamille, but, uh, his assigned ship made a very loud decision to quit Londo Bell, so that's probably a lot tougher now. Still... I'm not an expert in it, but that doesn't mean I don't think it exists, so I'll hear you out."
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
"Oh, so it was a pulse pump?" Roux says. "Just... I guess they were going FOR radiation... I thought most of the designs for that stuff before reflex weaponry kinda made it, you know, not a thing you REALLY want to use, were going the other way. (I learned about this in high school.)"
SPACE PHYSICS FOR PILOT CANDIDATES - FINAL GRADE: A-MINUS - "hit me up for a letter of recc if you're doing postsecondary," wrote the instructor then.
Roux takes a deep breath and lets it out. "I should catch up with him," Roux says, looking at the ceiling, "or, I guess, MEET him, but I guess I'm sort of making it difficult for myself because I want someone to tell me it's wrong," she continues in something of a monotone, "that it's just me being exhausted or it's a natural sort of terror or it's not some kind of new creeping phenomenon that's going to just, like, mean that I have to worry about my brain being dissected or that I'm going to end up hurting people or..."
Roux stops.
"Ehehe!" Roux says (which is not quite the same as a laugh). Then, slowly, the cheerful and slightly vacant expression goes back away, because it's not Needed.
"It's this kind of... sensation like I'm leaving my body," Roux says, "or that I'm getting outside of it. Like there's some sort of... sound or something I sort of am slipping into. It's not a sound, it's like a river. It's kind of both, I'm... Like this is a really vague analogy!! So: It's happened when I'm around, like... really advanced, heavy machinery, I guess is the best way to put it? I mean I'll tell you the three times it's happened I can put my finger on," Roux says, raising up a thumb.
"One, Denver Colony. That was an experimental facility full of all sorts of experimental stuff. But nobody was alive, it was just sort of a thing where everyone came in... I'd gone in there, honestly, to try and rescue Leina."
"Three (and I'm breaking the order on purpose) is the situation with the Institute in the REA. Now that might make you think, oh, you're reacting to the Newtype experimentation, right? Except that on the one hand I didn't even KNOW that was what was going on in Denver Colony, and second is the intermediate step here--"
"Which was fighting a Macross," Roux exhales, slumping in her seat. "That was awful."
"But it HASN'T happened in, and this is really screwed up to say, just... Mobile Suit battles," Roux says, with a sweep of the hand.
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
Koji grins a little when Roux gets the scientific application (a little ahead of him, but in fairness, Photon Power doesn't need a pulse pump to work, so it's the kind of tech they don't use reguarly). "Yeah, pretty much. Apparently it was a repurposed old system for beaming power to deep-space exploration missions, pre-Fold drive development."
Huh. Speaking of Fold Drives... "So it's non-standard sensations similar to Newtype stuff. Do you mind if we focus in on the outside case, the Macross? I'm assuming it was that one that attacked Pendragon."
A sound but it's a river. "Yeah, that is a flimsy analogy, but c'mon, I work with a material that defies thermodynamics as its first and most basic functionality. I can handle weird things we don't have the words for."
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
"It was the same ship," Roux says, "but it wasn't in Pendragon.
She seems pleased, though, and sits up straighter, leaning slightly forwards. "I don't know if it is different but we can argue over the whole identity semi--" A pause, as if she's remembering a word, "Semiotics of what a Newtype is some other time. I know what you mean. And yeah, it's not like that. It might be a stress reaction but I don't think it's JUST a stress reaction?"
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"Mm. You don't seem over-stressed, but, then, I guess that's why you're stayin' over the road, right?" He nods over to the sign for the 'Fuji Photon Therapy Spa and Hot Spring'. "To make sure you're properly acclimated to things."
He leans back as Roux leans forward, listening carefully. "Alright then, hit me. I wanna hear what it was like fighting that thing, inside your head."
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
"Mm," Roux says. "Well..."
"There was the usual stuff where I was afraid I was going to die. I mean, you probably know what I mean, right? It's sort of just... It's hard to say exactly what I mean. It's not exactly 'fear' but it's sort of shaped like fear? But I get that normally."
A second or two passes.
"But then the Macross Cannon fired. I guess that one didn't make the news, but with all the Minovsky around Earth I guess it'd be hard to tell. Besides which, the Federation probably sat on it." Roux crosses her legs. "It grazed Banagher. I'm shocked he's alive, honestly. ... I mean -- You know what I mean, right? I just... I can't say stuff like that to him or Leina."
"That's when it started. I sort of... It was like I saw what had already happened. And I knew what I was going to - no, what I DID. It was like..."
Roux makes a sort of reaching gesture with her hands. "... It was like I knew what I had to do. I mean like -- specifically. I broke the cannon, somehow," Roux continues. "I don't really know what I did. I guess I shot something important - like a power conduit or something..."
She sweeps a hand up and through her hair, shoving some of it off to the side. "Ugh! That was awful. I kept thinking 'augh I don't have the throughput'. I don't get why, but like - that kept coming to me. Throughput! Even now. I have never thought of that word more than I have in the last like, month, swear to God."
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"So you instinctively knew not just the threat of the weapon but exactly how to disable it, with no access to the documentation?" Koji frowns. "That really is unusual. I don't think Kamille ever claimed that kind of insight."
"Was it like something popped the word into your head, or does it feel like a natural thought you've got stuck on? ... How even would you tell the difference, I guess."
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
"The threat was pretty obvious," Roux says, "but I mean like, that doesn't always... matter. It's sort of a - intention thing?"
She scratches her cheek. "It just occured to me. I apologized to Leina about it because she was trying to use the masspro Double Zeta to get something done. I hadn't ever seen the outside of a Macross before!" A pause. "Not that model, anyway. The Pacifica came by Jupiter on their way in but that was just like, their trajectory. I didn't really go over and visit."
"Does that mean I'd always apologized to Leina?" Roux muses. "Like - huh. I saw myself doing that. That's a weird thing to have come up, when the rest of it was just... OK, fight the Macross 13."
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"So it was more like... Doing something because you'd seen yourself doing it, regardless of whether or not it would work?"
Koji scratches under his chin, thoughtfully. "That's a hell of a thing. Did you think at all about not doing it at the time or did that seem impossible? I mean, trying to stop a superweapon firing is pretty crucial, so any lead at all on that... I'd have chased it."
He grunts. "Sorry, this is kinda unscientific of me to ask stuff like that, I'm just... throwing the first things that come to mind at the wall to see what sticks."
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
"It was like I had already done it and I was seeing what had already happened," Roux says, a little hesitantly. "And no, I mean - that's why I asked you, I guess? I didn't just want to get accepted or like... Shit, I don't know how to put it. I knew you'd listen to me but I also knew you wouldn't' just -- *vibe*."
"I don't remember having any idea what I was doing, like the way you'd form an attack plan - even if you don't really think it out in detail you can go, alright, I was going to move to his left because he's favored the right and that arm is already damaged... You know what I mean?"
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"Yeah that's how I fought pretty much every kikaiju - we couldn't get good data on their capabilities so I basically had to go out there, take what they threw at me, and play around that, and this sounds... completely the opposite? In a weird and fascinating way, though."
"So like - " he picks up one of the mochi balls, absent-mindedly. "If I asked you 'what am I going to say in the next thirty seconds', could you tell me?"
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
Roux's eyes half lid. "Hm," she says, even as the waiter comes by to drop off beverages. Roux's mochi and berry-coffee drink, and whatever Koji wanted. "What would you say..."
"I think you'd say something courageous and intelligent but you'd manage to beef it up a little," Roux says, smiling, "but I'd let it slide because you're cool. Something like 'maybe if you tried reproducing the condIAAAAGHH!"
Roux opens her eyes. There is a coffee-sprinkled mochi sticking to her cheek. She reaches up to touch it, subtly aghast; she peels the clammy but delicious sweet off her face. "Oh my god!" Roux says, before immediately throwing it back!!
maturity
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
He even almost put the mochi to his mouth before deciding to destroy it in the name of science! Koji Kabuto truly is a fiend.
Anyway, they are forcibly removed from the coffee shop.
We cut now, to them both sitting on a park bench, Koji wiping the remnants of the poor sacrificed mochi off his jacket. He's grinning like a loon. "Okay, but, seriously, we've learned something here."
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
Roux managed to take her coffee with her.
"Yeah?" she complains as she works to get some of the mochi out of her hair, where it ended up being dug in pretty deep and getting into all that silky blueberry yogurt. That might be a delicious taste combo but for Roux, she calls it "I don't want to get ants in my hair."
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"Yeah, something very important - that at this stage, at least, whatever you're experiencing can't be called upon on a dime - maybe it only happens if you, or someone you care about, is under real threat, rather than just a terrible mochi disaster. ... Not that avoiding a fashion disaster isn't important, it's just not life-threatening."
Finally, he gets around to the most important part: "... Sorry." He's forcibly not grinning, but it's a near thing.
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
"Hhuh," Roux says, because she hadn't had this occur to her. This is where Koji's educated ways may help him.
She then glowers, just a little. "Don't lie to me," she huffs, folding her arms... but it doesn't realy last. Laughing, just a little, she says, "I guess you're right. There's nothing to do for it, I guess. But it's good to know I'm not... you know, going crazy or getting some kind of early stage psychosis, you know?"
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"I mean, it was a little fun to prank you like that." He grins again. "So were there similar flashes of precognitive insight during the raid on the Institute, or on Denver, or were the experiences different as well as the situation?"
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
"I mean there were the usual kinds of things," Roux says, "but it's mostly vibes. I haven't ever really been as good at some people are at reading hearts, I guess."
Walk, walk. "It's different from that. And it's not just fights, I guess? Or I mean, it doesn't happen in all of them. I was in plenty of engagements out near Jupiter, nothing like that happened..."
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"Maybe you weren't in situations stressful enough to warrant it developing? Maybe it's a new development in your abilities, in a way we don't have precedent for because the whole field of Newtype research is locked up tight by the Federation?"
Koji shrugs. "So many questions. Good thing you asked a professional Weird Shit Poker, huh?"
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
"I mean nobody really knows anything," Roux continues. "It's why I don't like saying 'Newtype' except for the sake of the argument... what if this isn't new, and we just notice it because of Mobile Suit combat? Or because of... of stuff like what the REA was doing."
"do you have to refer to it like that," Roux concludes flatly, with a sip of her coffee.
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"True, Sayaka would frown at me if she heard me refer to my Very Important Research Position like that," Koji concedes. "Something like 'Koji, the Head of Experimental Research needs to have a bit more decorum about his profession'." It's a dead-on impression of Sayaka, even the exasperation around the intonation of his own name.
"Aaaanyway." He clears his throat. "Seriously: Please keep me informed if you have another experience like that. Maybe talk to Sayla, too, if you can get hold of her, I know she's been running herself ragged for a while."
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
"It might be better than being a VIRP," Roux says -- before she snort-giggles at the emulation of Sayaka Speech.
"I will," Roux continues. "And you stay in touch too, alright? I'm going to drag Judau over here sometime soon. He just keeps going around and, I don't know what he's doing all the time. I'm probably happier that way. And I definitely am! You heard, right?"
Roux, slightly abashed, says, "Leina got me and Judau to move into that damn house in Spain. I feel like a politician. Oh well~, I guess it's not like we did anything but get lucky to get in there..."
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"Yeah, Leina mentioned it, and that's great. It's been just the two of them for so long, even when she and Shiro were dating, because he'd mostly hang out here. That house needs to be full." A shadow crosses Koji's face briefly, remembering Juzo Kabuto's estate. "A big home with hardly anyone in it isn't a great roof to live under. It turns into you living with hollow memories, instead of making new ones."
He shakes it off. "So I'm glad the two of you are gonna be around to help fill it up - even if it does make you feel like a politician." He grins again. "You should catch up with Sayaka while you're in town, too! I'm sure she'd love to see you."
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
"It really is pretty great here, even if the weather's better in Spain," Roux says, with a thoughtful nod. "Tell her I'm around if she wants to get a manicure or something! Actually--"
Roux looks up at the spa hotel. "Did you ever do the mud bath? I took this one person in there and she was just like, wow! I don't think she'd ever even gotten a facial."