2023-05-29: More Footsteps to Come
- Cast: Sousuke Sagara, Seolla Schweizer
- Where: Merida Island
- Date: U.C. 0097 05 29
- Summary: In the wake of the incident with the Vist Foundation, Sousuke and Seolla get plenty off their chest about how much hits close to home.
<Pose Tracker> Sousuke Sagara has posed.
It has now been a few days since Dakar. A day since the tense discussion with command over secure channels. Now, after a somewhat wandering path home, the Tuatha de Danaan battlegroup and guests are back at their island home.
It's time enough for people to get their game faces back on. The engineers are barking orders at each other, the crew are making way to their base stations. Sousuke Sagara stands at the dock, arms at his side, dressed in his SRT olives and watching as Arbalest is craned out of the TDD's hangar to its place of honor in the island's maintenance bays.
The great white machine sits silently. Somehow, today, the hunched-over posture of a standby arm slave looks more than ever like an expression of defeat.
Sousuke doesn't quite notice the slump in his own posture, either, as he turns away.
<Pose Tracker> Seolla Schweizer has posed.
Without fail, every last one of the TDD's crew members, when they've hit their exhaustion point the past few weeks, have all been subject to the exact same immaculately timed blessing.
Sousuke Sagara is no different.
A tap on the shoulder. A provision of an ice cold water thermos right in front of the face with one hand, and a sandwich overloaded with a cornucopia of vegetables in the other hand, atop an easily inserted bed of salami. (For all Seolla knows any given crew member's a vegetarian so it's. An optional extra! Those who leave it behind, she's happy to nibble on it herself.)
"Sergeant, I can practically see the steam billowing off of your head from here," Seolla chirps, striding out to sit on one of those big posts what which you'd use to tie a ship to, tracing her shoe along the harbor's edge - flitting between the Tuathe de Danaan, the Arbalest, and Sousuke himself.
"...Honestly, if you told me three months ago that I'd be the one with a clear head helping prop up everyone else dealing with all the storm clouds, I'd wonder there was a doppelganger of me running around. What's weighing you down in particular about all this? Tell me about it, please."
<Pose Tracker> Sousuke Sagara has posed.
Sousuke blinks over as Seolla ghosts up on him - so very few can get anywhere near him that quietly, or maybe his head is just on another planet right now. He's never been particularly emotive at base - oh sure, you can wring some yelling out of him in a fight, but at the day to day level, the difference between all-cylinders Sousuke and hasn't slept in three days Sousuke is mostly obvious if you can spot the bags under his eyes. Seolla has, however, had opportunity to see both, seeing as he was running himself pretty ragged back in Tsutsujidai. As were they all, really--
Regardless. He cracks a somewhat tired smile for Seolla when she presents herself, and accepts her gift. "Oh, Seolla," he says. "Thank you."
She settles down; he finds an ammo case nearby and does much the same. He tucks into the thermos quickly. A career soldier kind of eater: Quick and efficient, not savoring too much. Though, he is slower than before. He's been learning how much people like to know their work is appreciated.
"Perhaps it's your own proximity that lets you see through it," he muses, eyes casting down.
What's bothering him, specifically, she asks. He doesn't bother to introduce too much; they all know what's on all their minds. "Leina and I...had had a fight," he says. "She was trying to pry into my personal affairs in a way that bothered me. We hadn't talked since then, but I..." He shakes his head. "Obviously, I don't want things to end this way. And Rikka fought so hard in Tsutsujidai, believing in people. And..."
He scratches his head, and one bite into the sandwich, sets it aside to fiddle with the lid of the thermos. "I'm sorry, Seolla. I still find this kind of...control, difficult to understand."
<Pose Tracker> Seolla Schweizer has posed.
Elbows planted on her knees, Seolla rests her cheeks in her hands, a teensy bit of tiredness creeping into her own gaze. Of course it's like that - everyone's pushing it right now, and even if Seolla emphasizes others getting rest - there's only so much rest that can be had, much as she keeps herself brighter for just these occasions.
"When I think about it with Leina," Seolla takes a sip of her own water thermos, "...Maybe I'm using too many parallels to who I know. But it reminds me of my...'older sister', Ouka. She'd be poised and diligent and say exactly what everyone wanted her to say, even if they contradicted. But they put her through the worst of it. Sometimes I felt like I was trying to get along with someone who was like...remote controlled from elsewhere. I'm not gonna give up, though."
Sip #2, boots clanging against the big iron post, followed by the crunchy sound of dragging her heel along the concrete. "You mean...control in the sense of...how they force people to do things? Cause that's a surprise to hear. I mean...I thought we were really similar in that way. It's definitely not...'normal' for people our age ot know how to go to war so well. ...If you're saying that, I kind of wonder what you've been through, just what it was like. It might not be as distant as you'd imagine..."
<Pose Tracker> Sousuke Sagara has posed.
Sousuke nods, slowly, to Seolla's observations. "I saw her, some little," he says. Ouka participated in GUTS activities - somewhat - for a while. "I believe I understand your meaning."
Hm. She says she's surprised, and he nods. A faint smile touches his lips, strangely considering what he says is: "Kaname cried when I told her this...but perhaps it would help us both for me to explain myself. I do know much of your background now, after all. Colleagues should trust each other."
He picks up the sandwich and noms into it, considering his next words.
Washes it down. "My first memories are of being deposited in the deserts of Helmajistan. This was the height of the Gryps conflict, so around 0087. I would've been...not even ten yet, I suppose. I had orders to exterminate the warlord Majid, who was giving the REA difficulty." Water. Gulp. His expression is conversationally empty; no strong emotions about these words.
"He bested me, of course, and took me in. I was a Mujahideen with him for some years before Lieutenant Commander Kalinin found me." Yes, like their commander.
He looks up to Seolla, shifting gears. "I understand...indoctrination. I suppose I must've been subject to some degree of that. I understand sleeper agents, who conceal their loyalties. I understand people forced to turn on their comrades by threats to people they love, as we think has happened to Akane Shinjo. I even understand that there are ways, pharmacological and otherwise, to confuse a person to do something they might not with a clear mind. But..."
He shakes his head. "Rikka Takarada and Akane Shinjo had been gone for barely a week, as I understand it. These methods take years to change a person's loyalties so completely as to be useful in field combat. This isn't the world I understand. It's...flashing lights, and spirals, and..."
His eyes cut to Arbalest, as its sled moves off the dock and toward the main hangar. "...magic," he says, with a certain dire tone.
<Pose Tracker> Seolla Schweizer has posed.
"Majid, Majid...Helmajistan..." Seolla worries with the braid at her temple for a little while, dredging her brain for all the incidents she's taken part in. "...Out in Central Asia, you mean. I've done a few operations out that way, but...nn... I mostly was working alongside stuff like Moralian PMCs, some of the incidents going on in Ireland, and a few sorties that I think had to do with Neo Zeon. Definitely most of my piloting's been out in space, so I'm most comfortable flying."
Magic, huh. There's a knitting of her eyebrows at remembering exactly what they tried to do to her mind - obviously, it's hardest for Seolla to remember what happened right before she's had memory disruptions. "...I mean, I always thought of it like. A single bullet can cause a very drastic change in the brain, from working to non working. So if you're really careful with those bullets, make them out of different stuff, you can just make them work in different ways. They've been experimenting long enough on people...that they've likely mapped out pretty comprehensively what does what when you prod it the right way. It's complicated, but so is the Earth, and we have lots of detailed maps of that..."
<Pose Tracker> Sousuke Sagara has posed.
"Mmm," Sousuke nods. "I have been primarily on the ground. A mercenary named Gauron destroyed my band, and after Kalinin and I killed him, we simply moved on. Battlefield to battlefield. There's been plenty of fighting that can use a mercenary of my skills, regardless of age."
Seolla does him what he recognizes as a favor and thinks hard about her own suffering. He listens, turning his cup in his hands. "I see," he says. "The map of the human brain...careful, thorough study...yes, of course. That does make sense. I've seen myself the kinds of uncontrolled effects long-term use of pharmacological modifiers can have..." Takuma...by the end, he wasn't even aware of the world around him. Lost to that singular rage. Sousuke had to kill him. But he's beginning to see the tragedy of his fate.
"Simply a science I don't understand, then," he says. Though, it doesn't make him much happier, it seems like. "....they don't deserve this," he says next. "Rikka's just a girl. And Leina, she...the things she said...I don't believe the girl I know would feel that way."
"...bullets," he says, his thoughts turning again. He knows it was metaphor, but he also knows what he says is true: "...it must hurt..."
<Pose Tracker> Seolla Schweizer has posed.
"...Eh? You don't believe she'd feel that way?" Seolla's eyes go a little wide, lips pursed around her straw, a bright and airy wind kicking up on this sky blue day - maybe almost too bright, for the mood around here. Sometimes, you wish the day were cloudy and rainy - like it'd validate your own feelings - isn't it just doubly defeating when the world itself defies you, in that one small way?
"Sergeant Sagara...you have a lot to learn about the ways girls feel, huh?" A cheeky little smile crosses Seolla's lips, giggling to herself. "Trust me when I say that sometimes, that stuff isn't hard at all to unearth. Stress is something that can dig it up, but...eheh, really, I know how turbulent it is. Leina's feelings aren't what surprise me - I don't know her that well, but she's been through a lot. You wouldn't know it from her position, from her skills - but she's told me a few stories that even make me cringe. At the end of the day, nobody involved in that Neo-Zeon mess got off that well. Even that Judau guy...I mean, he sounds well adjusted, like he rolls with the punches, but you don't just wave bye to the world and run off with the Jupiter Energy Fleet if you're TOTALLY fine."
"And yeah. It...hurts. But the worst part, maybe, isn't when it hurts." A slight bit of narrowing in Seolla's pupils - and a brief tousling of her hair to pull free from the abyss of trying to remember too hard. It was always easiest when she just forgot about it. "...it's when you do worse harm to yourself to handle that pain."
<Pose Tracker> Sousuke Sagara has posed.
Sousuke blinks up at Seolla smirking at him. He hums and looks down. "Mao says that often," he muses. "...and Kurz, but I think he means something else."
But he does listen to her reasoning. "....I suppose so. Perhaps that's what made her a target to begin with."
With Kaname, her falling into these things is something he can blame on himself. But he knows that Leina was not his responsibility. If anything, their last interaction had put considerable distance between them. Somehow that's almost worse; that he'd written her off to such a degree he had no hope of knowing something had been done to her. The coldly logical thing he said just now is undercut by the look of mounting frustration on his face, and he tsks and slugs back a lidfull of water.
"Drugs," he says, distantly, like he's connecting thoughts. "That can bring out emotions, and that can bring out memories. So what you're saying is that these beliefs were...not something she already believed, but something she could be made to with the correct inducements to her thoughts."
His eyes drift down, again, the physicality of his thoughts a rarity that shows just how much he's turning this over. "No possibility for change. No better way forward."
He runs a hand through his hair and sighs, frustrated, and finally his calm cracks. "Why does that bother me, now!?" he snaps, and punches the ammo case. He loses that attack, and curses quietly, shaking out his hand afterward. "I shouldn't care about something like that! Staying alive as long as you can, that's all that's ever mattered!"
He seethes out a breath and slumps, hands on his knees. "God damn it," he hisses.
<Pose Tracker> Seolla Schweizer has posed.
A slight click of Seolla's tongue, when her thought on just slightly flustering Sousuke falls flat. And she thought Arado had cobblestones for brains...this guy's got a whole boulder in there!
Quickly transitioning into a leap off of her post when Sousuke punches a hard object uselessly, lunging forward to grab the sergeant's shoulders. "Whoa whoa whoa. Easy there big guy. Honestly, it's best not to overthink it, in my opinion. ...I talked a lot about what kinds of stuff they could've done to the three of them, but to me, that doesn't matter as much as how they are definitely in the hands of absolute bastards and we've gotta get them back. At the end of the day, there's...just so many ways to coerce people into doing stuff they don't want to, into sticking alongside you when it's a horrible place to be."
A little bit of a teary-eyed stress valve leaks from Seolla's eyes. A soft sniff, as it starts to catch up to them - even though there's at the same time blazing determination when she wipes her face. "...we give it all we got to help people in these situations. That's why you're here. That's why I'm here! That's why Dr. Mass is here. I'm willing to do anything it takes to put an end to all the ways people are forced into war. Even if I've gotta become way stronger than I was already made to be. Even if we've gotta make it something of a judgment call on when and where we act. ...I'm tired of knowing kind hearted people suffer and struggle, and I don't care what I've gotta do to put a stop to it. So I'm...putting all my trust in them. In Sayla, in Tessa, in you. ...let's not give into how tough the odds are, alright? One step in front of the other, you know..."
<Pose Tracker> Sousuke Sagara has posed.
Sousuke Sagara's skull can sometimes be mistaken for a cinderblock.
But sometimes the frustrated teenager inside it can be seen, when he boils over like this. Seolla grabs his shoulders to calm and restrain him, and it does make him stop. He doesn't look at her for a long few seconds.
"...you're right," he sighs, finally, deflating. "The means don't matter. What's been done to them to make them think that way...is irrelevant. In the end, it's happening, and we can only deal with the results. I'm sorry, Seolla."
Seolla wipes tears away from her face while Sousuke makes himself breathe to calm himself. "When I saw you in Tsutsujidai, something felt...wrong. I had to act. This is the same."
Is that why he's here? He's here because he was recruited, the nature of the mission should be irrelevant. But.
He thinks of Kaname, half-dressed in a pod in the middle of Khanka, dazed and afraid. Tessa, looking at him with that soul of stone she conjures. A girl with a body like a doll but a soul fiercer than anyone he knows. And Seolla, struggling now in front of him, to become the person the world needs so that nobody else like any of them has to exist.
He thinks of Rikka. She has that skeptical smile of hers; or Leina, with her brazen but piercing questions. These people don't deserve this. This isn't their world. But it's barely his, either, anymore.
"This can't continue," he says, hard. "I feel the same." He blinks up toward Seolla's eyes. "Alright," he says. "One step in front of the other."