2023-07-29: Species Who 'Sing'
- Log: Species Who 'Sing'
- Cast: Ruri Hoshino, Jana Cektru
- Where: Beach Island, Pacific Ocean
- Date: 2023-07-29
- Summary: Jana meets up with Ruri on the beach, and has a chat with her about Alexis, whales, and the unique spirit of humanity.
<Pose Tracker> Ruri Hoshino has posed.
The Nadesico has parked at a private island to have some fun time at the beach! And also... do some investigation, but this is not about that. Private Nergal business is private Nergal business.
Ruri, right now, is standing in the shallows, with two bright yellow floaties affixed to her arms should the water bowl her over. Mr. Prospector stands a little further out, a fishing line cast into the depths, and tellingly he's always looking back to her.
(She's a considerable investment, and Mr. Prospector doesn't want her to drown.)
Luckily, Ruri's gotten a crash course in water safety already, which explains the floaties. She crouches, in her one-piece swimsuit, to watch a little crab scuttling by underwater. Her eyes are gold as the bands around her arms, and very, very large.
This is the feeling of ocean wonder!
<Pose Tracker> Jana Cektru has posed.
Fun time at the beach! What a great concept. Not one unfamiliar to one Jana Cektru, though that is not entirely the reason that she is here. No, it requires a little more than just a desire for a beach to end up on a private island that Nergal has picked out for reasons. But she has no plans to interfere with their official mission.
So while Prospector is looking back to Ruri, he might also see a woman in blue approach. Jana Cektru is dressed for the beach, in a blue swimsuit (two pieces) and a light, billowy overlayer that extends down halfway to her knees. She has sandals!
If the look happens to resemble 'labcoat: beach ver.' that is clearly a coincidence.
"The oceans here really are quite beautiful," she reflects as she steps forward and sets her bag down on the sand.
"Hello."
<Pose Tracker> Ruri Hoshino has posed.
On the sands, under an umbrella, Inez Fressange -- who is literally wearing a labcoat over a black swimsuit -- locks eyes with Jana, narrows hers, and smiles in a way which some would describe as mysterious and others just as a knife.
She goes back to reading her book.
"Yosha--!!" Mr. Prospector crows, as he gets a bite, and tugs. "It's a big one...!!"
Ruri frowns, lightly, looking up to him, but she doesn't protest his cruel catching of a fish. She's distracted from this foolishness by the approach of a familiar soul --
Just as --
SNAP!
"Aaahhh! There it goes...!!" Mr. Prospector wails, as something Big deeper in the ocean crests the water, and his fishing line breaks in half entirely. Luckily, the line doesn't hit anyone, though he's left staring at the dangling end haplessly for a moment.
And -- "Oh! Oh, hello! Ms. Cektru, wasn't it?" He asks, turning in a hurry, as if Jana hadn't caught him in the middle of some Nadesico Nonsense (patent pending). "Ahhh, this beach is popular..."
Ruri looks at him, and says: "Do you need to fix your fishing rod, Mr. Prospector?"
"So I do," Mr. Prospector sighs, his shoulders falling. "Will you be all right, here?"
"I'll be fine," Ruri says. "Everyone's here." And, indeed, there are many people from the Three Ships Alliance, spread out over the beach.
"Well, then -- please excuse me," he bobs his head to Jana, and slips out, as Ruri wades from the shallows back to the shore, where Jana's laid her bag down.
"Hello again, Ms. Cektru," she says, politely, mild as ever.
<Pose Tracker> Jana Cektru has posed.
Jana locks eyes back with Inez. She nods crisply at her. Perhaps that is its own explanation...
"Hmmm." Prospector's trouble with the fish occurs, and Jana tilts her head looking him over. "Having fun?" she wonders, and then smiles. "That's right." To both! It is popular. And she is indeed Cektru. "I appreciate being remembered." Since it has been a while, after all. But Prospector has to fix the rod, and...
Jana has no plans to do anything that would make Ruri unsafe, of course. But even if she did, there are a lot of friends!
"Good luck," she says to Mr. Prospector, and then nods to Ruri. "Hello, Ms. Hoshino. How are you doing?"
A beat, "I've long liked oceans," she volunteers. "The one on the colony where I met my old friend was much like this one. Greener, I think. But very much alike."
She could get straight to the point, but there's something to be said for living in the world.
<Pose Tracker> Ruri Hoshino has posed.
"I'm good," Ruri says, and her expression is gentle to match. "We all came to the beach, now... everyone's having fun." She looks over at Uribatake's Beach Tea House, where he's currently serving up deeply mediocre shaved ice to Ms. Howmei and her Girls.
Eri Uemura and Harumi Takana are holding score placards, which really spells his doom. Anyway.
Ruri turns and looks out, then, at the deep, deep blue. "Greener?" She asks Jana, with curiosity. "I didn't know oceans could be green. Though, I guess this shallow water is aqua..."
Foreshadowing is a literary device --
<Pose Tracker> Jana Cektru has posed.
"That's good," Jana says. Her eyes turn towards the Tea House for a moment as Ruri looks over, and she lifts an eyebrow. "Though... People do always seem to find new ways to have fun, don't they?" Mediocre shaved ice...
And the doom to come.
Ruri asks a question though. "They can! The diversity of planets in our galaxy is considerable," she says, though she says it in a voice unlikely to carry, because she at least pretends to keep her secret. "Even if we only count the ones that have seen humans..."
"...Well. I've seen a few in my time. I suppose I'm feeling nostalgic, because I went home for a while. That's why you haven't heard from me in some time."
"Though it would seem there are others from far away who have been troubling you," she says, troubled herself.
<Pose Tracker> Ruri Hoshino has posed.
"That's true," Ruri agrees. "Fools have ingenuity, too."
That may as well be the force driving the Nadesico! You know, aside from the Phase Transition Engines.
Things can be powered by more than one thing. Like how the Nadesico also has Nuclear Pulse Engines! As an atmospheric treat!
Luckily, there's plenty enough ambient happy beach noise -- laughing and squealing and a yelp as a beachball hits poor Jun Aoi square in the back, because he can never catch a break -- that Jana can at least pretend her secret's safe. Everyone's pretty distracted, at least. (Though she might note that an absolute tree trunk of a man keeps looking in her direction. That's Goat Hoary. Don't worry about him.) "Really?" Ruri asks, blinking her big gold eyes. "Humans have been on a lot of planets?"
OH NO, SHE DIDN'T KNOW THAT PART.
"Oh," she's distracted by the news of Jana's absence easily enough, at least. "Is everything okay?"
She sighs, and adds, sitting down on the sand, "... everything hasn't been all okay here." She looks out, into the water, as Something Big dances through the waves. "Mr. Kerib made Jirak possess my whale... I guess he was possessing my dreams for over a year. Then, on my birthday, Chaos Jirak came out and trapped me inside him so he could attack everyone. It was a big problem, but everyone saved me." She pauses, and adds: "Then, later, a man who I guess isn't called Gai Kurenai came to turn the crystal Chaos Jirak left into a card. He said he works with NERV, but I didn't find any record of that. Do you know him?"
<Pose Tracker> Jana Cektru has posed.
Jana smiles at the talk of fools. "That's true."
She doesn't say who's a fool though.
Goat Hoary.... Yes, he probably knows. He's good at knowing things. But he's about to know because, "That's right. Years ago, your Macross Colony Fleets found some other planets; some of them refused to return when asked. Humanity hasn't spread all across the galaxy yet... But they've gotten a good start. It's an admirable explorative drive."
But the absence, "Yes, now. There was a family matter I had to attend. But all is as it should be now."
But Ruri sits down, and Jana moves to sit with her, rather than staying standing for the moment. Alexis Kerib...
"I see," she says, frowning, looking out to the water. "A kaiju possessing your dreams... I'm sorry you had to go through that. I heard that there was a kaiju incident involving the Nadesico, but not the details." She looks back to Ruri. "i'm glad they saved you." Then she pauses. "Gai Kurenai... Hmmm. I've met him, if I'm thinking of the same person, but I don't know him well. He has worked with us before, though not for us so far as I know. He was part of the group in Tsutsujidai."
"Are you experiencing any lingering effects from your exposure?" Jana wonders. "If you're troubled, I can research this matter for you."
<Pose Tracker> Ruri Hoshino has posed.
"Like the Frontier?" Ruri blinks. "I see. I'll have to look it up." Even geniuses don't know everything!
"Oh, that's good," she says, on Jana's family matter, and she accepts her explanation without any real interrogation. She's still quite young; she takes things on faith.
She shakes her head, though, when they come to Jirak. "It's okay," she says. "I don't remember my dreams, anyway, so if anything was different I wouldn't have noticed. I haven't really noticed anything different now, either... well, I have difficult feelings about Mr. Kerib, but I don't think that's because of Jirak. I think that's just what he does." Alexis, that is.
"Nergal-san did a full sweep of the Nadesico, after, to make sure there was nothing else hidden there," she adds. "So I think that's okay, too."
She keeps in mind that Gai's associated with Tsutsujidai, but leaves the topic be, for the moment.
<Pose Tracker> Jana Cektru has posed.
"Yes, like that." Jana is always happy to see such an inquisitive approach; her smile widens slightly when Ruri says that she'll look it up. As to her family matter... it's complex, but not something she wants to burden Ruri with; what she said is true. It's as it should be now. Perhaps she'll share the details another time.
"Yes, I would have difficult feelings about him too in your position. My own feelings about him are quite negative, I admit, though we've never properly met."
Nergal did a full sweep... Hmm.
"That's good." A pause. "I heard that the kaiju was a 'whale'. And that those are highly intelligent mammals who live in the water. I'd like to speak with one now that I have this knowledge, but haven't yet had the opportunity." Pause. "Are you fond of oceanic organisms, then?"
<Pose Tracker> Ruri Hoshino has posed.
"Lots of people feel that way," Ruri agrees, mildly, on Alexis. "Since he's hurt a lot of people, too. I wonder if it would be easier if I'd never met him... and just knew what he did."
She sighs, tucking her knees up by her chest, and playing her fingers through the damp sand. She finds a shell, there, and examines it for a contemplative moment before gently tossing it back into the shallows. It was someone's home, and it will be someone else's home, soon.
Ruri nods, looking back over to Jana, finally. "They're my favourites," she says. "They have been ever since before I can remember. I had the whale Jirak possessed since before I could remember, too... I guess that's why it was a good vessel. Well, it's sad, but it's okay, since I still have my fish mobile." It's not entirely okay, but she's made her peace with it.
It was still mean for Alexis to take it and use it for something like that.
"But whales are very smart," she adds. "Dolphins, too. They communicate with each other in a lot of ways, like singing and sonar, and they're good at solving problems, and they have their own societies. Sharks are different, since they're fish, not cetaceans, but they're still nice. Since humans have changed the oceans so much, they're having a hard time, but they've managed to survive anyway."
<Pose Tracker> Jana Cektru has posed.
"It would probably be easier," Jana admits. "But that's not the life you've lived." The difficulty belongs to Ruri, too.
It's a nice shell.
"I see. I'm glad you still have that much." Her favorites... That's nice. Jana smiles anyway, contemplating that. But her smile dims when she considers the cruelty necessary to use such a thing.
Alexis Kerib must be stopped.
"Is that so?" Jana wonders. "I'd heard that they were intelligent, but hearing that they have societies makes me even more interested in contacting them. People tend to assume that only the societies like their own matter, but on my world, we've become familiar with other species."
She then closes her eyes. "I believe I sense one out there... Yes, it must be that large shape."
"...Well, hopefully they stick around for a little while. It would be rude to reach out to them while I'm talking to you, after all."
<Pose Tracker> Ruri Hoshino has posed.
"Oh," Ruri blinks, as if she's surprised by this being the life she's lived. "I guess so."
Ruri looks out, at the sea. There's still Something Big out there, and it's entirely why Mr. Prospector was able to hook -- and lose -- such a big fish where he was fishing. The fish were scared of something, out there...
(But being hungry isn't a crime.)
"I read about it," Ruri volunteers, quite happily, in her way. She's not terribly expressive, as a rule, but it would be difficult to say she's displeased. "Different families have their own songs, and they're able to find each other, even across the sea. They pass on knowledge to each other, and it's different depending on what they need to learn. A pod who lives on one side of the world will have a lot of differences to a pod on the other side... just like humans, really."
She adds, reciting the information she's absorbed from Riika's book: "There was something called Evidence-01, too. That the remains of a flying whale which someone called George Glenn found when he was exploring space. I guess it was pretty conclusive evidence that intelligent aliens existed, since they decided when they were studying its brain case remains that it must have been smarter than Earth whales are. Not that people didn't think life outside Earth existed before then," she says, with a little shake of her head, "but a lot of people thought it wouldn't be anything we could communicate with. Single-celled organisms, stuff like that... well, after we found Evidence-01, we ran into the Zentradi, so it wasn't a theoretical question for very long."
<Pose Tracker> Jana Cektru has posed.
Jana doesn't belabor the point. It is what it is!
But that something big... Yes, it's close enough for Jana to make contact with, she thinks. Hopefully it will be receptive. But she'll see soon enough.
Being hungry is not a crime.
Jana likes to hear more about what Ruri's read. Not only because she's read it, but because much of it is new information to her. "I see... Yes, that's the hallmarks of culture."
Evidence-01... "Ah, now this I believe I have read a bit about. I find the matter of first contact most fascinating. You know, we've encountered similar species before--space-traversing intelligent life forms, that is, who don't require ships like you or I do."
"...Mm, yes. The Zentradi... You're still unique in your interactions with them. I admire how humanity came to know them."
"That's part of what made me so interested in your world, actually. To befriend a hostile species... It's not easy."
<Pose Tracker> Ruri Hoshino has posed.
"Apparently it happened because of music," Ruri says, of the Zentradi. "Since both humans and Zentradi could appreciate it, they were able to find common ground, and the fighting stopped. I wonder if Evidence-01's people would have reached us in the same way?"
Ruri finds it pretty fascinating that someone could travel through space without a spaceship, but -- well, it's not entirely alien, to her. "I guess swimming through space would be kind of like what it feels when I become one with the Nadesico," Ruri reflects. "Except for them, it would really just be their bodies." It's a strange thing to say, but, well -- Jana already knows about her technopathy. It's fine.
"Though," Ruri sighs, "I think we're the hostile species, these days."
<Pose Tracker> Jana Cektru has posed.
"Music... Yes. I think they might have." It's a nice thought.
"That sounds like an interesting experience. It's one I haven't had." It's not so strange to Jana, because she does know about Ruri's technopathy. Really, that kind of thing is something the Salome might chase, understanding such experiences.
If they were more like their counterparts in a certain other universe, Ruri would be a great potential resource...
But as it stands, Jana simply shakes her head. "It's true that humans are fighting amongst yourselves at a great rate. But that's unfortunately not abnormal, during a certain stage of cultural development. I believe that you have the potential to become more. You show it, yourself--the way you show interest in others' ideas, in people and creatures unlike yourself. In time, humans will find your own way forward, I think."
"I intend to be here to see it, and to help ensure you have that chance. I decided that in part thanks to you, you know."
"But I shouldn't take up all your beach time. Do you want to get back out to the water? I'd be happy to watch you until Mr. Prospector returns."
<Pose Tracker> Ruri Hoshino has posed.
Ruri and her unique gifts are a great potential resource to a great many people -- first, and foremost, Nergal.
Don't worry about it.
"Most people haven't," Ruri says, instead.
She nods, though, as she considers what Jana has to say. "I'm happy about that," she says, when she shares that she decided it thanks to her. "I hope it gets better... it's kind of intimidating how the Federation hates us this much." She means it's frightening. And it is -- particularly at her age.
"It's okay," she assures her. "Since our mission isn't pressing, right now. But... that would be good," she says, with a moment's deliberation, "because I've never really swum before this."
Ruri will, indeed, enjoy splashing around under Jana's watchful eye.
And perhaps Jana can sing a song to the orca pod out there, sometime...