2023-07-11: .dancing tigers, custom builds, and other revelationS
- Log: .dancing tigers, custom builds, and other revelationS
- Cast: Yuliana Kafim, Ujico Issa
- Where: The Silent Castle, Kaffeklubben Island
- Date: 2023-07-11
- Summary: Yuliana invites Ujico to the Silent Castle to thank her for her work in the Silent Calling's soup kitchens. She shows off the gunpla which Ujico inspired her to pursue, and also the new trick she's taught her tiger -- but an accident causes her to reveal her tentacles, only for Ujico to reveal that she's a MASSIVE fan. It's nice when people accept your beauty, isn't it?
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
It isn't difficult for the Silent Calling to find help, particularly in the current climate -- but good help is still worth recognising. For all Ujico's shortcomings (and they are many), Yuliana remembers what she did for her when she was recovering; to her, she extends grace.
And an invitation to come to lunch. Lunch at the Silent Castle, of course, is ever a fine affair. The servers are more chatty, this time, even -- not by much, they're still not here to socialise, but they're more curious about Ujico's day. There's a lot of vegetarian food on offer. It's delicious. None of it is poisoned.
Once they're done, she asks --
"Would you like to see my latest project?"
And that's how they come to YULIANA'S GUNPLA CAVE, which is to say, the hulking castle room where Yuliana stores her model wanzers. She's made a whole shelf of them, now. Notably, her table has a soldiering iron and tools -- she's working with shaped metal, not plastic. There is wiring.
Yuliana, in her black robes and black billowing cloak, moves to the table and pulls a silk covering off to reveal --
A tiny model Da Xukong 0. He has eight legs instead of the usual four, and a scorpion's tail which is currently in the middle of being built, a little Cleave Axe holstered at his side and a crest on his head. This was definitely a custom build; there are no kits for her prototype floating around in the world. (Not yet, anyway.) "What do you think?" Yuliana asks, curling her fingers by her mouth; her sleeves travel up, exposing her purple bracelet alongside her fine wedding rings. "It's been quite an effort..!"
<Pose Tracker> Ujico Issa has posed.
It's still a formal and somewhat intimidating setting, but the food is very good. And absolutely not poisoned, which is very good. Once Ujico smelled the familiar tomato-gravy-and-spice of aloo matar, her fate would have been sealed...!
Especially since she had seconds. It was really, really good.
Conversation stayed light, because Yuliana is an adept conversationalist and Ujico keeps a box of safe topics inside her head. "I would," she nods, partially because she is and also partially because if she stays sitting down she is going to fall into a comfortable food coma, right there at the dining room table.
YULIANA'S GUNPLA CAVE is massive - bigger than Ujico had had any real way to expect. But she smells solder before she sees it, which is more interesting than just how much space Yuliana has devoted to her one of her passions. The workbench is an impressive setup - an astonishing variety of specialty tools (and a much nicer soldering iron than the entry level one Ujico ordered off of the internet).
"You've been really busy," Ujico says, counting the completed models. There are so many. "This is the latest one, huh? It's Da Xukong 0, right?" Pulling her twintails safely back with one hand and her wooly sweaterdress with the other, the alien girl leans closer to get a better look.
The danger of snagging a corner of something delicate on her person is a danger that has hounded clumsy Ujico all throughout her life. She has workarounds. "The little axe is so perfect," she wonders. "Look, it's perfectly in scale!" She isn't sure if the extra legs are on purpose and does not mention them. "Where did you get the parts??"
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Perhaps this, too, is Yuliana's wicked plan. She knows the works of the food coma, and she knows that a little light activity is frequently the antidote.
She's keeping a good arm's length away from Ujico, even -- she's being polite. "I've had... a lot of free time," she settles on, after a moment, standing on the other side of the table. "Since I'm not a soldier, any more... even with the Silent Calling, I've needed something to occupy my hands, sometimes."
Yuliana laughs, lightly, her fingers fanning over her lips again. "Actually, you were the one who inspired me to try this," she says, "since you gave me those clever little flowers." And indeed, if she looks on the shelf, she may still find them, all clipped together beside a Tendus model and a Tieren.
She smiles, and gestures, to the machine. (She's watching Ujico carefully, of course, but she'll let her lean in.) "Yes -- the Great Void," she translates back to English, quite satisfied. She gestures to the tools for shaping metal, and the various lengths and panels she's been shaping. "Since of course there are no models or schematics for my prized possession, I've simply been creating them myself. My wife is much relieved that I'm turning my engineering acumen to smaller projects, I think." Is that part of why she has such a positive opinion of Ujico? Because Elisa likes her gunpla???
And at this very moment...
WHUFF
Something big and green lumbers in.
Sokrovishche, their treasure of a tiger, ambles into the gunpla room -- he's allowed in here when Yuliana's here, it's fine -- and approaches Ujico, staring at her, expectantly. "Sokrova!" Yuliana exclaims, delighted to see him. "Dear, you're far too late to steal our dinner!"
<Pose Tracker> Ujico Issa has posed.
It's so very polite of Yuliana to keep a distance from Ujico! It would be just awful if Ujico were to be cut off from the emotions of others, of her place in the universe--
Oh.
"It's really all hand-shaped metal! I've only seen this from hardcore modelers, or sculptors." Ujico pauses for a moment, recalling the number of Wanzers she had just counted. "That means you're both," she nods, and carefully stands up straight before making the 'pon!' gesture a little belatedly. The flowers are still there, on the shelves with all of Yuliana's completed projects... Was it really that meaningful...? Her cheeks warm, and Ujico looks away briefly, at a loss for how to act. "I'm glad they helped. I'm glad you got better."
"Is Elisa--" WHUFF.
Elisa is not WHUFF. Ujico turns, the sight of a familiar and friendly tiger just the kind of shock one needs to forget aaaaaaall about that food coma one was considering. "Geh!" Of course it's just Sokrovishche, who would never ever even dream about nibbling on guests. Uji feels a little silly for being surprised!
"Hi, Sokrovishche," she smiles, crouching on her heels to bring her face level with the tiger's. "Hi, kitty. Hiiiiii~ kiiittyyyyyy~" she sings, reaching up to pet his soft, soft ears. "o"
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yes. It would be just... awful.
Anyway.
Yuliana beams, sparkling, when Ujico notices her effort. "Mm-hm!" She hums cheerful agreement, and has to make special effort not to express herself in one specific way. (She spares the thought to keeping her frills folded behind her ears.) "Haha... you're such a dear."
Elisa is not, in fact, WHUFF. (Though Yuliana can envision her making a joke like that. Yuliana can also envision Elisa making jokes, unlike the majority of people who know or know of Elisa. She's in a very privileged position.) Sokrova is a polite boy, though, and he doesn't headbump Ujico until she greets him.
He does donk his head gently into her when she crouches down, though, with a warm chuff-chuff which is his version of purring. "Aww," Yuliana says, fingers to her cheek. "He likes you...!"
And Yuliana snaps her fingers, and says, "Say -- would you like to see a trick I've been teaching him, of late?" The trick is PROBABLY not eating his houseguests. Right?
<Pose Tracker> Ujico Issa has posed.
Bonk! Ujico likes cats. Cats are easy. Tigers are big cats. Tigers are not, however, supposed to be easy. Except that Sokrovishche is, because he's a sweetie. Ujico likes animals. They don't lie. They don't pretend.
"I like him," Ujico replies easily, truthfully, smile so wide it's almost a grin. "He's a good kiiii~iiitty~" No tiger ear remains un-pet! No Ujico remains un-bonked! She nuzzles his forehead gently, like she's seen on approximately one million cat videos, but retreats far enough to scratch his chin right after.
She looks over her shoulder at the snap, green eyes wide and at ease. "Tricks? Like..." She tries to grasp for the image of a tiger doing something for kitty treats. Jump through a hoop?
Yuliana doesn't seem like she would enjoy that. "Yes, I'd really like to see," she says instead, and stops scratching Sokrovishche's chin long enough to stand up again.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Sokrova eats it all right up. He's a tame tiger! And that's a strange and singular event, but, well, he's the only green tiger in the world, too.
"He's a stalwart friend," Yuliana smiles. "And very fluffy." Indeed, tameness has only seemed to ADD to his fluffiness. It is entirely possible that Yuliana treats her special boy to spa baths and fur conditioner. Don't worry, tigers are the weird type of cats who love water, so it's fine.
"Come, come! It's a little crowded in here," she says, as she leaves the GUNPLA CAVE, gesturing to them. Sokrova pads on out as she heads into a nearby sitting room, instead, and says: "Well, it's not the dance hall, but I think this should do." She grabs the couch, and drags it closer to the wall, sweeping the coffee table beside it. (And doesn't struggle at all with moving the furniture, strangely enough.) "Would you like to take a seat?" She invites Ujico, before she moves to the middle of the cleared room.
"Sokrova! It's time to spin!" She invites him, as she twirls her hand above his head. And he does, in fact, spin in a merry little circle. "Forward one two, back one two!" She directs, merrily, gesturing with a hand, and he pads back and forth with his merry little pawsies. "You see," she smiles, to Ujico, as she moves with her tiger, "I have been teaching him to dance! Why, he even knows some ballroom -- hup, hup, Sokrova!" She pats her shoulders, and Sokrova jumps up to put his GIANT front paws on them, now rather towering over Yuliana as she holds a tiger like a dance partner.
She's strong enough to bear his weight, apparently, and looks delighted about the whole thing.
<Pose Tracker> Ujico Issa has posed.
Fuwa fuwa fuwa fuwa fuwa~~ Ujico wants a tiger! (Ujico does not actually want a tiger. She lives in an apartment and all of her nurturing goes towards a moss and a Haro. But it's fun to imagine.) "Good boy," she tells him very sincerely, because stalwart friends should be praised for being such!
She follows Yuliana out of the GUNPLA CAVE amenably after sneaking one more glance at the half-completed model on the table. What kind of trick needs a bigger room than this? Is the hoop on fire?
Yuliana goes to move the furniture aside, and by the time Ujico has figured out that she ought to help -- Yuliana has it taken care of! Easily. Like they aren't weighed down by gravity at all. "Oh, do you lift weights?" Ujico asks, because she's pretty sure couches are heavy. Her couch was heavy when she moved it into her place.
But she has a seat on the newly relocated sofa, ankles hooked around one another. "Oh-" He's doing it! And look how happy it makes Yuliana, to see him do it. Ujico leans forward a little bit, smiling. "He's so smart. Did he learn very qui--" And then HUP! Her hands lift off of her knees, sort of hovering in the air as Ujico laughs brightly, and sings along. "Dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeeeeen~ she sings alongside them.
Ujico doesn't know any ballroom songs, okay? But she's delighted and wants to be a part of the fun.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"I do!" Yuliana confirms, brightly and with no hesitation. She does, in fact, lift weights; the Silent Castle has a Silent Gym. That's not why she's so strong, but anyway.
Yuliana laughs at the song, because even if it's not to a ballroom beat it's certainly an effort. "Oh, yes," she agrees, as she takes a step back and a step forward, and the tiger draped over her follows her lead, too. "He's a very quick study. Our little Sokrova is such a clever boy! And step, and turn --"
But Sokrova, for all he is a very clever tiger, is still a tiger, and he's used to walking on all four paws. He tips and overbalances, when Yuliana tries to lead him on what's, being fair, a very telegraphed turn, and -- "oop!" Yuliana yelps, as she moves to catch him, but tigers are VERY heavy.
Before she thinks about it, she's making sure her tiger doesn't fall down with all her might.
Which is to say that two black things weave out of her black cape, to coil about the tiger's midsection as she steadies him. They're a little like flowers, and a little like snakes, and a little like hands, and a lot like nothing of this Earth at all. "Shh-shh-shh," she hushes him, as she helps lower him back down, only to look at him and at the tentacles she's wrapped about him and --
Well, Sokrova doesn't seem shocked about them. Really, he seems more concerned that he almost fell on his human, with a concerned little chuff-chuff as she unravels her tentacles from him. She looks up to Ujico, though, alarm on her face. "Ah... this is..."
The crests on the snake's -- faces? -- flare, as they turn to face her, clacking their claws together.
<Pose Tracker> Ujico Issa has posed.
Ujico doesn't lift weights. She does other, apartment-sized exercises. Maybe she could lift weights like Yuliana, and then she could move couches, also like Yuliana. It's good to be strong, for all kinds of reasons.
Continuing to hum and vocalize after she runs out of lyrics that she remembers, Ujico finds her head nodding side to side in time with the beat of the song. It's... not ballroom, no. He's such a smart tiger, though! "Digging the dancing queen~" Ujico continues, now that she is firmly back on solid ground with the chorus. "Digging the da-HAA--"
Because Sokrovishche is a tiger, and tigers are not known for their two-step. She starts up from the sofa as if Ujico could help, like she's close enough or strong enough to help catch the tiger - or Yuliana, who lunges forward to do the same. "Oh!! Ah, are you okay??"
They are! Ujico sighs with relief, standing dumbly in front of the sofa, when her brain finishes parsing what exactly grabbed the tiger and kept him from banging his poor fluffy ass on the Silent Castle's expensive floor.
Ujico blinks, flat eyes a little less flat than normal as they track the movements of the... they're tendrils of some sort. Vines, with snapdragons at the end. Lucine showed her what a [snapdragon] looks like. They're an Earth flower. They're not a vine.
This is...
"Cool!" Ujico declares, clapping her hands firmly together once, and bouncing on her heels. "That's so cool! Are they autonomous? Can you move them?" She's... still bouncing.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"It isn't what --" But before Yuliana can try to gaslight her way out of this one, she's shocked out of her sentence by Ujico... bouncing on her heels? Shock redoubles on her face, as she blinks her endless green eyes. "C--cool?" She echoes, disbelieving.
She looks down at the snakes, and tells them, still quite baffled: "It's -- all right." And having assured them of that, the things like orchids or snakes or hands seem to calm down a little; their crests fold back down, adding a little more to 'snake' and subtracting a little from 'orchid', and they sway to either side of her.
"They, um... well, to a point," Yuliana settles on, unsettled by Ujico's reaction. "They can act on their own, but they're part of me, you see, so they're under my control." A breath of a pause, and she presses: "Do you -- really think they're cool? I... I admit, I'm... surprised." She's gobsmacked, actually. "It's not the typical reaction I get... there's a reason I tend to hide these things."
<Pose Tracker> Ujico Issa has posed.
She keeps bouncing. Ujico seems to have forgotten she's doing it; or maybe her body decided to run BOUNCE.EXE and it's just going to have to take its course. At least it doesn't seem to impede any of her other subroutines.
"Cool," she repeats, hooking a finger around one of her horns and letting the weight of her arm hang from it, not quite as intentional as a tug.
So they're almost seperate entities? But Ujico also talks to things that aren't truly 'sentient'. Like Palisade. (Or, if you want to be needlessly cruel about it, Apple.) But Yuliana isn't used to people reacting well.
It's something Ujico has seen. Something she has experienced. Over and over until she, too, hid everything she could.
"Ah," she says, and finally puts her heels on the floor for good. "It's the humans, isn't it." She doesn't make the 'pon!' gesture now.
"Because they're-- they can be really mean," Ujico corrects herself. Understanding has dawned on her. Her eyes have lost a bit of their flat affect. They're the color of pond scum, of [moss]. "It's okay. Because I'm not human either. See?" she smiles, and taps the point of one horn like it's an in-joke, a secret code, just between them.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Bouncy, bouncy, bouncy... Yuliana doesn't tell her to stop, at least. Maybe just because she's so baffled.
Yuliana tilts her head, as Ujico calls attention to her horns. Aren't they fashion statements? She wears them so brazenly, Yuliana was sure they were. But...
Can she be sure?
"That's... that's right," Yuliana sighs. "I'd always figured you just had a headband on, did you know? You're quite brave, just wearing them in the open like that. I'd never get away with it... the world's already looking for reasons to condemn me for a monster." She sounds terribly deflated, about that.
Yuliana's hand settles, on one of the snakes beside her, and she speaks gently. "But these gifts were given to me to protect me from Dr. Devi and her twisted works... I am glad for them." She won't make the mistake of expressing concern twice. Her concerns are private things. "I was made a hybrid long ago... so, I suppose I'm no longer human."
She's better than that.
<Pose Tracker> Ujico Issa has posed.
The weight of her arm had hung safely from it. The base disappears into her hair. They're shiny black something, not entirely chitinous nor keratinous. "They're mine," Ujico smiles, some kind of proud. Her favorite feature. Her reflection looks a little more like [her self] every day.
"Everybody thinks they're a headband," she frowns a bit, more confused than anything. "I guess they're fashionable?" Which seems a little weird, but if people want horns they should be able to at least try out horns. Rita had seen them, and Loomy had teased her about them, but nobody else had mentioned them. It's... encouraging.
Yuliana calls her brave. Ujico doesn't know. It's-- it's not--
"It's... not easy to be different," Ujico says instead. "Some people are always going to look for things to tear us apart over. If it weren't horns or snakes it would be something else." Her heart flutters, a trapped winged thing inside her chest, reliving old feelings again. "But different is really special, too. Because your snakes are cool, and if they protect you then that's even better!"
Ujico may have headbutted someone once when her patience was finally stretched too thin. There is no proof that she did. They're not really sharp enough to leave wounds.
"If the world wants a monster, it'll find one. It'll make one." There is something tired and poisonous inside of Ujico, and it likes that Yuliana is just like her in the important ways. "I'm glad you like them! I'm glad you like yourself!" Even if that isn't what Yuliana said.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"They are quite stylish," Yuliana offers Ujico a compliment, under the circumstances. Besides, if she likes Yuliana's snakes, surely her horns are also worth acknowledging?
She sighs, a hand pressed to her cheek. "Mm... you're right, at that," she supposes, in light agreement. They're looking for trouble...
Yuliana's headbutted a lot of people. And objects. And windows. Anyway.
She smiles, all in all. "I do," she agrees, and she is glad to agree, really. "I do like myself. I am the culmination... the world has iterated and iterated, trying to reach paradise, and only now is it in grasp. I am beautiful." Her smile is glowing; her words are a memory.
And the memory keeps her warm, even if the woman can't.
"I am glad," she goes on, "that you see this, Ujico. I appreciate that you do not degenerate my beauty. It is a kindness which distinguishes you. Of course, I'll ask you not speak of this... this world does so want to make a monster of people like us." And she is a touch shy, at that, glancing away, hand to her heart. "Perhaps, one day, I will be as brave as you are, and I will not hide the truth of myself from the world. Perhaps... one day."
Yuliana smiles, to her. "Please, stay a little longer," she invites her, and sounds hopeful, at that. "I shall need to give Sokrova a good brushing, since he did his best today... perhaps you'd like to assist me?" Of course she has servants for this sort of thing, but Sokrova is her special boy, and if she wants to pamper him she gets to pamper him. And if she wants to emphasise this point of connection with Ujico at the same time, well...
It's not entirely malicious, though certainly it is manipulative. Yuliana does want people to understand her. She does want people to think well of her. This much is true, even if she continuously fails to adjust her behaviour to be properly decent. Isn't it nice to want things?
Of course, Ujico is able to leave without any troubles when she's ready to leave.
Of course, she's invited to come visit again.