2023-02-14: The Venom in My Soul
- Log: 2023-02-14: The Venom in My Soul
- Cast: Full Frontal, Sayla Mass
- Where: Rinascita Cafe, Side 6
- OOC - IC Date: 13 February, 0097
- Summary: A ghost sees the sister of the man whose face her wears. He decides to tear open all her unhealed wounds.
<Pose Tracker> Full Frontal has posed.
A presence called him to this place. Side 6. The former Riah Republic, now just another colony owned by the Federation. How many missed the taste of their independence? Or were they too downtrodden to even realize they've become mere dogs once more? Full Frontal grimaced as he walked down the manicured paths, heading into the city proper. The ghost within was being called. It yearned to meet, so familiar and yet so distant. Who?
The Ghost of Char grimaced for a flash, as a slight pulse of discomfort echoed through his temple. Closer and closer he came, passing by restaurants and storefronts, glitzy retailers and designer brands one might seen in any of Earth's most glamourous shopping districts.
Finally, the kindred spirits stopped at a cafe. Rinascita, a well-loved sign next to the door proclaimed, a menu hanging beneath the name. It was old, older than the One Year War, the type of establishment that was borderline mythical anywhere else touched by the wars of the Universal Century. Not here, however. Riah had managed to keep its neutrality with both the Federation and Zeon largely intact for most of the war, and whatever duels had been fought during Zeon's incursion were on the other side of the colony.
It was here that the presence was strongest, the ghost within yearning fiercely to be reunited. Fine then, I'll humor you. The inherited spirit did not reply, merely urging its shared vessel onwards inside, an almost pathological need driving its prison of flesh forwards past the bell-strung door, a light peal of sound echoing through the storefront as the supreme leader of the Sleeves entered.
It was quiet at this hour. No lunch rush now, yet still far too early to be considering dinner. The few inhabitants included the barmaster, who nodded politely at his entrance, a waitress smoking at the bar, doing a crossword puzzle, and a woman seated in a booth in the corner, her blonde hair striking against the green wallpaper of the cafe.
Sister.
Full Frontal paused. Sister? That would mean...Yes, it all made sense now. A slight smirk escaped his composure, before the Ghost of Char reigned in lingering emotions and returned to his cultivated passivity. Moving towards the empty booth next to the blonde-haired woman's, Full Frontal sat back to back with her. How strangely exposed he felt without his mask, and yet, it might just work out to his favor...if he could reign in the ghost inside.
I see you're doing well, my dear sister.
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
Rinascita was not one of Dr Mass' usual Side 6 haunts, but it was an easy place to have her meeting- and the meeting over get some work done before getting ready to return home. She was going to need to prepare for the movers. ...Or just ask Knight and Renais to do some quick lugging around. Probably quicker for the in house stuff...
Next to her, the psychoframe sits in her bag. Her tracking method. Her early warning system. It didn't activate here... But something else did.
And then there is a flash, and Sayla eyes widen as she sits bolt upright. It can't be. She was supposed to have more time. She still needed to prepare. But she felt it.
Big brother!?
She loses it a moment later, but she's already startled. Startled that when the voice comes from behind her, the man she didn't notice walk in. She doesn't turn yet, but her hand slips under her coat to her fathers pistol. Her walls fly up, even if they are still damaged. She's not going to let anyone in if she can stop them. Her voice is quiet in response. "Don't you dare call me that. You don't have the right."
<Pose Tracker> Full Frontal has posed.
She can't see him smile, nor can she hear it in his voice. But this, this isn't the smile of someone reunited with family after years, nor is this a sad smile, or a smile of remembered regrets.
This is the smile of a puppeteer who's found a new doll on strings to use.
As much as the spirit within drives him, the ghost is but a fragment of the first Red Comet. It can compel him onwards, but it cannot stop him. Sayla Mass. Artesia Som Deikun. It matters not, for like all the rest, she's just another pawn in the great game.
As the waitress came over to take his order, Full Frontal spoke in 'his' voice. Ordering 'his' favorite drink. Asking it to be prepared 'his' favorite way. Finally, he added a dish that was among the oldest memories buried in his vessel, much beloved by the Red Comet. "One of your Socca please, with extra black pepper."
Memories resonated upon his utterance of the dish. Rustic countryside meals shared with the Mass family. A youth smiling as he wiped crumbs of chickpea pancake from his younger sister's mouth. Memories that were unknown to the scientists who implanted Char's ghost in him. Memories only 'he' would have. Yet the human spirit is intangible, unknowable, and a Newtype's even more so.
More memories of the Red Comet's childhood flash in his mind's eye. A happier time, a reprieve from sorrow and tragedy, yet an intermission whose curtain was raised. The show must go on.
Returning his attention to the unnerved Sayla Mass, Full Frontal spoke once more, a whisper that might as well have been as forceful as a shout. "Yet that psychoframe of yours didn't alert you of my presence. I am no threat to you, Sayla...or would you prefer we drop the aliases, and I call you Artesia?" Shifting slightly so that their heads were almost touching, the Ghost of Char injected manufactured gentleness into his tone. "I've been wanting to see you ever since that fateful day. Ever since Axis dropped. Ever since I returned. Is it so wrong of me to feel that way, dear little sister?"
Nodding politely to the waitress as his coffee arrived, Full Frontal enjoyed the aroma briefly, letting the ghost within guide his motions much as 'he' would've done, before taking a sip. Naught but the sound of coffee passing through 'his' lips passed between them, until finally...
"We're family, Artesia. Who else do we have in the end, but each other?"
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
Sayla's whole body is tense. He uses her name. Her birth name. The name of a girl who died years ago. She can feel it. The weaponization of his favourite food. The violence of bringing up sweet memories to hurt her heart. They hurt even now, even eighteen years since she last saw him-
But this isn't him. "Don't call me by that name. You killed that girl, after all." There's so much anger, crackling through them. "You had plenty of chances before, didn't you? Or perhaps you could have written?" The venom in her voice is toxic, but not just to him. This anger makes her old wounds bleed, pustulent and infected. "Or do you only think a letter counts if it comes attached to a briefcase of gold in lieu of behaving as a brother?" She shakes her head. "You can't expect me to believe you've changed after all the time you spent showing the opposite."
It's what he says last that makes her jerk her head away to turn to look at him. Without the mask.... he could be him. He could be Casval. It stuns her into silence for a moment. But the words...
The anger on Sayla's face could kill. The gun she has been quieltly working into a better spot definitely could. Her voice is still too low to be heard, but... "Stop it." There's hurt there. Hurt leaking through the walls. "I know what you are. And you have no right to his voice. His face. His memories." She's hiding it, but her hand is shaking on the pistol, her finger resting on the safety.
"It's clear you aren't him. You don't understand those memories you're throwing at me."
<Pose Tracker> Full Frontal has posed.
Full Frontal frowns as he carefully weaves his web, threading a needle with the barest opening as Sayla scrutinizes both his words and mind. The Ghost of Char had experience working with her ilk, of persuading Newtypes who could read minds and detect emotions. Yet like all the same, she would be made another piece on the Universal Century's game board.
Turning to face her, as he puts his coffee down onto the saucer, Full Frontal displays the most *genuine* of saddened smiles. "You'd be surprised at what dying and then being medically resuscitated will do to a person, little sister."
His gaze shifts, looking far, far away, memories of Axis and his operations welling into his mind, but carefully managed so that they never show the template but the result. Weaving the fabric, a tapestry of half-trusts and obscurity that shows that Char Aznable did perish that day, but Neo Zeon would not let him stay dead.
"I...was a poor brother to you. Anyone who knows of the two of us would say the same. Yet I've been given a new lease on life, so to speak." Addressing her accusation, the Ghost of Char stares directly into Sayla's eyes, his ice-cold blue meeting her own frost-coated stare. "You're right. In a way, I am not Char Aznable. He died that day. He died full of regrets, full of sorrow, full of despair. But he was brought back, and he decided he could no longer keep his name. He became me. He became Full Frontal. A vessel for the people he had failed, so that this time, he will not."
The Socca arrived, piping out, steam wafting up from it, carrying the scent of cracked black pepper, caramelized onions, and rosemary to their noses. Full Frontal turned back to the food and cut it up, offering a piece to Sayla. "I know you always preferred yours with a little less pepper, sorry. Eat. Although I'd dare to say we're both a bit too old to have me wipe the crumbs off your face."
Setting the spare plate down on Sayla's table, the Ghost of Char took a bite like 'he' would have. "I will disagree with you on one piece, sister." Taking a audibly crunchy bite, savoring the crackling zest of the black pepper, and the cloyingly sweet umami of the onions, Full Frontal swallowed before continuing. "I understand these memories because they are my own, Sayla. Even if my body's been torn asunder and put back together, even if I'm a broken man made to walk once more, this past is mine."
"Won't you share a meal with your big brother one more time?"
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
Sayla decides to make a call. "So what Amuro told me about throwing your escape pod away when it reported your death was true, then?" Sayla Mass is very good at lying, and making true statements seem like lies. That smile... it could be real. It could be Casval's...
But Casval isn't here. She's sure of it.
And then her heart rises into her throat. Even though she knows it's a lie- a lie you want to be truth so badly can be bent into a truth. She looks at the pancakes placed on her table. He acts so much like Edouard did. Like her big brother did. But...
For a moment, the desire to believe it trumps the reality she knows- because what's left of Artesia has come running for the surface. For a few moments, the look on her face is hopeful. The grip on her pistol starts to loosen. "Then why? Why are you doing this again? Zeon is a poison pill now... You have to know that." Her voice isn't hard here, it's soft. Desperate.
Her eyes look to the pancake once again.
<Pose Tracker> Full Frontal has posed.
Full Frontal knows instantly he's being tested, but he steps up to the plate. "My escape pod...was not tossed away. While Amuro may have returned now, he and I met our ends together that day. My pod was held by the Nu Gundam against Axis, as he so desperately tried to push it back. Until the very last we spoke, trading barbs and arguing. Then, the light of the psycho-frame overwhelmed us. Amuro was corrupted by that entity, while I came to on an operating table, broken and remade."
A mournful look flashes across Full Frontal's face, as his words are reinforced by the ghost within, its essence possessing and overlaying itself over the vessel it normally stays so passively within. In this moment, the two become one, their last moments on Axis being replayed in their mind over and over with such certainty. After all, it was the truth.
I know you can see the truth of Axis in my mind, sister. I died, alone with the man who killed the first woman I loved.
The leader of the Sleeves looks sorrowful as he hears Sayla's plea. Why? Why are you still with Zeon? Why do you stay, knowing you will be used until you burn out in orbit once more? A solitary tear escapes the vessel, a message from the remnant spirit to his dearest sister. "Because it's all I know, and have ever known. The Spacenoids need me, now more than ever before. You know what the Federation is like, Sayla. You know they have not changed. You know they will keep on like this until the very Earth we call home becomes as dust, strip-minded and polluted into a tarnished memory of humanity's verdant birthplace."
Full Frontal places a hand on Sayla's shoulder, gently, like 'he' would have. "Eat your Socca, sister, before it gets cold." He waits, expectantly. Even a ghost has the decency to wait for someone to eat.
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
Sayla falls silent again. Frontal makes his claim. It could be the truth. It's close to what she got out of Amuro in their brief talk. And then she feels him close, just for a moment. Just.
And then he steps wrongly, placing a hand on her shoulder. Sayla barks out a cold, mirthless laugh. "'All you have ever known? I suppose that's what Monaghan Bakharov would tell you, 'Full Frontal'."
"I know about the project that created you. I know who headed it. And I know you that you were a Cyber-Newtype subject. Whether you are a remnant of Neo Zeon's work, or Bakharov you developed from somewhere else. And they loaded you with the memories from the Sazabi's Psychoframe. And so we have a poor imitation."
She suddenly darts in, moving to shake the grip on her shoulder and get a distance Frontal can't close before she pulls the trigger. Across the diner, a tall Zaftran woman with swept blonde hair in a pinstripe suit and a black coat suddenly stands, and trains a revolver on Frontal's head. Dr Mass is so rarely without a bodyguard somewhere, and Side 6 has Sleeves Activity.
"I've had enough of you toying with my feelings, Full Frontal." She says it loud enough to be heard, immediately after, the Zaftran woman yells for everyone to get out or get down. The cafe empties easily- and Sayla drops her voice again for only Frontal to hear. "And of course... There's the fact that the real Char Aznable is right now weeks from re-entering the solar system. We'll see how things go for you from there."
It's careless, but Sayla was hurt and she wants to hurt Frontal back- in the same way he hurt her.
<Pose Tracker> Full Frontal has posed.
Full Frontal laughs, full of mirth. "Well done, miss...and yet, you've erred so tragically. I never come without a backup plan." With those words, two red dots are trained on the Zaftran woman's and Sayla's foreheads, quicker than the comet that was his namesake. Furthermore, Full Frontal mentally activates the remote call for the Sinanju. Walking towards Sayla slowly, the trained guns on the Ghost of Char don't faze him in the slightest.
You can't kill what is already dead.
"Tell me, do you really think the knowledge of the first Red Comet's return would at all bother me? Do you think a man who had everything, yet threw it away at the thirteenth hour for a petty rivalry would be a threat?" Turning his back on both women, Full Frontal stretches his arms out as if addressing an invisible audience. "I am the Ghost of Char. I am the Red Comet Reborn. Char Aznable lost his claim the moment he sabotaged himself by giving your Amuro the psychoframe. I will not make the same mistakes."
Putting on his mask, Full Frontal turned to face the two of them. "The Spacenoids cry out for salvation, and I will be the one to deliver it to them. I thought you, 'his' daughter, would understand their plight better than most. Instead, you're galivanting around, running a charity and deluding yourself into believing you're helping. Tell me, does giving your children fish to eat everyday actually solve their problems?" The Ghost of Char lets the challenge hang in the air for a long moment. "It does not. All you've done is teach them to be dependent on your handouts, instead of actually addressing the root cause of their suffering. The Federation is poison, and it must be cauterized if we've any hope of saving the Spacenoids and Mother Earth alike."
A faint scream in the air announces the incoming arrival of the Sinanju, a faint red blip in the sky growing more visible by the moment. "I will say one thing...believe in what you will of experiments and how I was reborn, but the psychoframe of the Sazabi held more than just memories. A part of your dear brother was in there. In this time, in this mirror of shattered glass, I am more than just the pretender you think I am. Your brother stared into the abyss, that fateful day, and left a part of himself there. I am his inheritor. I am his despair, his sorrow, his regrets."
"And I know more about him than you ever will."
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
The woman gives a tiny hand signal- sniper. Her eyes flick to Sayla, and Sayla's to hers, but both stay still. Doing anything here would cause fire to open in the colony, and any shot that hits Sayla would hit the surrounding buildings and catch others in the way. And her brother rarely cared for collateral, this nihilistic shadow.
As he unleashes his hate of Char, of the Federation, of Spacenoids... of everything. There's things she could say, but she sees point in wasting words here. They man won't listen to a thing she says.
So he is definitely a clone of her brother.
Instead, Sayla glares up at him. Her walls close completely, no emotion seeps out. If what he wants is a reaction, an emotion...
She can at very least deny him that.
<Pose Tracker> Full Frontal has posed.
As the Sinanju roars in, it lands in front of the cafe with a solid stomp, shaking the block. After a slow, long gaze at Sayla, Full Frontal merely leaps up to the MSN-06S's open palm, and then into its cockpit, addressing Sayla from his crimson cocoon.
"I bid you adieu. While it's a pity we didn't get to enjoy our Socca like old times, I can see you've plenty to occupy yourself with." The Sinanju kneels down, its monoeye level with Sayla as its gleaming green glow bathes her in verdant light as the Ghost of Char tears into her.
Then, standing upright, the mobile suit prepares to leave...and quick as a flash, it draws its beam saber and slashes downwards, the tip gouging into the side of the entrance. The signage is cleaved in twain, Rinascita no more. A final declaration plays over the Sinanju's intercom.
""I will surpass Char Aznable, and when the dust settles, I will be the only trace of him left to you.