2023-08-06: Symphonic Suite
- Log: Symphonic Suite
- Cast: Yuliana Kafim, Michele Luio, Rita Bernal, Sayaka Yumi, Shelby Korts, Zoltan Akkanen, Parminder Chaudhri
- Where: The Science Fortress Laboratory, Japan
- Date: 2023-08-06
- Summary: Yuliana calls her... allies...? ... together, in the Science Fortress Laboratory, to help explain her plan with the help of one Parminder Chaudhri. Unfortunately, Rita's brought a plus-one, too -- the other woman tightly connected to her, Shelby Korts. Shelby and Yuliana both take this extremely well. Well, neither of them kill each other. They have a plan to save themselves without relying a miracle which could bring an end to Rita's existence, though Rita is willing to sacrifice herself.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana stormed out from the Science Fortress Laboratory a month ago, tearstained, furious, and she has not returned. Not to bring Zoltan more disgustingly outrageous snacks to prove some fool point between them -- and not to see Rita, either. She hasn't returned anyone's calls. It is fair to feel she's left them to their fates, cruel and capricious and bleeding.
Until --
Apropos of nothing, a month to the day --
It's Michele who gets the call, Yuliana tasking her to gather them together, with a date set two days in the future to give her time to organise. From her, the request spreads to the others; it may even spread further than Yuliana could have estimated, once Rita gets her claws into it. When the Da Xukong 0 crawls up through the water into the hangar, with its too TOO many legs, it hunkers down and the cockpit opens to reveal...
Yuliana Kafim, plus one.
Yuliana springs out first, of course. She's wearing a cloak over her pilot's suit which strangely stays close to her in defiance of gravity, clearing the space from the gangway to the ground without bothering to use the stairs. But there's a huffing-grunting noise from inside that arachnoid wanzer, as a tall, Indian man with blazing orange hair and haven't-bothered-to-shave-for-a-week scruff across his chin drags a roller suitcase and an entire fold-up whiteboard out of the cockpit.
"You good?" Yuliana calls up, to him.
"Fuck you, Captain," he replies, cheerfully, as clonk-kachonk the wheels make contact with the steel of the gangway. Clonk-clonk-clonk, he drags it all down the stairs.
Yuliana jerks a thumb behind her, as he makes his way down. "That's Letda -- uh, Parminder Chaudhri," she adds, a beat later, given how few people here might even speak Indonesian. (It's slang for 'letnan dua' -- second Lieutenant.) "He's a monster, but he's got a background in Intelligence, and he's scraped all the intel I've got for you. It's easier for you to hear it from the horse's mouth."
"That's not the part of a horse I'd describe myself with, but whatever," Parminder grins, having finally gotten to the bottom of the stairs. With a two-fingered salute from the top of his head, he greets them: "Yo. Sup?"
"I could have told you he was coming," Yuliana supposes, "but I thought we'd get all our nasty surprises out of the way at the start."
Surely this is the only nasty surprise coming.
<Pose Tracker> Michele Luio has posed.
Michele raised an eyebrow when she got the call, but she did as asked - Yuliana had connections, and connections had data. Organization was her strong suit, so Michele didn't pay too much heed to the fact Yuliana had seemingly abandoned them, because she's a person who, for the longest time, believed abandonment was inevitable, one way or another.
When Yuliana arrives with a second, however, Michele sighs. It's not that she doesn't trust him (she doesn't), it's that she prefers forewarning.
"Did you really bring a guy with his own private whiteboard?" Is Michele's first question, as she is currently brewing herself a cup of the strongest black coffee in a cheap pot.
"Michele Luio." She introduces herself to Parminder, despite knowing he certainly knows who's here. "How was the trip?"
It's rude to ask 'just tell us what you know', after all. You learn that in *college*.
<Pose Tracker> Rita Bernal has posed.
News from Yuliana, finally. Rita has been a wreck since their argument -- refusing to manifest in her holographic form for a full 24 hours. The Phenex simply exuded an aura of sadness and worry. It was all very upsetting.
But now, Yuliana is coming back, and Rita is determined to be ready to meet her. Dressed in her favorite of the dresses Kaworu helped her download, today Rita is a clad in a lovely shade of lilac. Flowers are pinned here and there around the dress, more toward the bodice, fading away toward the skirts. The straps are simple, ethereal ribbons. Fashion doesn't have to be realistic when it's simply a projection.
'Seated' at one of the convenient chairs located around the secret lab's least broken table, Rita waits anxiously. Before her sits a little gift -- several seashells fused together in the form of a heart.
Beyond her worry for her meeting with Yuliana, Rita has reached out to other allies. Shelby, of course -- who already knows the location, and Rita trusts with everything she is. And Sayaka, of course. This is practically her house, it'd be rude not to keep her informed! Rita would be lying if she didn't admit she was looking forward to seeing the older woman again, too.
"Michele, do you think everyone will get along?" Rita asks, hopefully, her hands knit together in worry. "I know everyone's had disagreements here, but if I can manage existing with Zoltan, they can manage one meeting, right?"
Oh, yes. Zoltan's here too.
Yuliana's arrival finally comes to pass, and she's accompanied by...
Rita scowls.
"I don't like him." She says, sourly. "Why did you bring this man to our secret base?"
Decidedly turning her head away from Parminder (if that even IS his real name), Rita approaches Yuliana, her little seashell creation in her hands.
"I'm so sorry about last time." Rita says, carefully. "I made you a present. I hope it helps."
The heart is offered forward, and... it's actually pretty nice. Rita clearly spent quite a bit of time on this, arranging each shell into place and carefully melding them together with whatever sort of magic comes with her odd existence. It's just bigger than the palm of her hand.
Green eyes watch eagerly to see Yuliana's reaction.
<Pose Tracker> Sayaka Yumi has posed.
Yuliana had disappeared from the Science Fortress Lab for about a month, and quite honestly, Sayaka wasn't even sure if she was going to come back. Yuliana isn't exactly her favourite person right now, after all. And she certainly hasn't gotten along well with Michele or Zoltan in the past either...
Which is why she's here specifically to keep an eye on her, and the task force she's assembled. And even besides that point, she doesn't think Jona should cruelly and endlessly drift across space for the rest of his life, either.
So here she stands, in a perpetually arms crossed pose - the much larger Aphrodite Areia doing the same, hovering just below the water on low power. The Mazin is perhaps not judging, but she is watching.
There is a brief glint of a smile though, as Rita makes her appearance through hologram projection. As well as Shelby, the younger girl she remembers being around while the Labs were taking care of Rita.
When Yuliana brings in her unannounced guest, Sayaka simply shakes her head at his all too casual and inappropriate-for-the-situation greeting. "Sayaka Yumi. Welcome to the Science Fortress Lab." She greets cordially, all the same (dropping the Director title as this is more Kabuto property than anything).
"...Well? What do you have for us, Mr. Chaudhri?" She asks, clearly willing to get this meeting on the road.
<Pose Tracker> Shelby Korts has posed.
A psychic manifestation in her mind at night is nothing new-- but her mind being contacted while asleep is still a novel sensation. A knock-knock in the middle of the night on doors ethereal and noncoporeal has led to a request for Shelby Korts to hurry to Japan, post-haste, for a meeting-- a matter of great importance. Rita doesn't always explain everything off the bat, but her friend asked... and she answered.
It takes a bit for her to arrive; the knockout pink and black Zeonic machine settling into the hangar; Shelby's eyes squint as she just *stares* at the Wanzer -- like she's looking at something... *something*.
Pressure. Weight. Distortion.
By the time she's climbed out of the Mobile Suit's cockpit, she's shrugged out of her normal suit and slipped into a pair of sneakers, racking the garment over the arm of the lift. Slinging on a t-shirt with a torn collar and a few frayed edges over her body glove-- and arriving with a satchel bag as she fishes her glasses out of it and pushes them on.
The noise is starting to t w i s t.
"Sorry I'm late," she says, quickly waving to Sayaka-- shooting a look at Michele, given their last conversation was at the bar--
-- Yuliana
Kafim
On cue, her finger thrusts toward the voidlady, looking at Rita with an unusually animated expression and voice raising: "What the hell is SHE doing here?!"
<Pose Tracker> Zoltan Akkanen has posed.
An entire month. An entire goddamn month. The first few days were here and there, mumbling to himself about yet another person having run out of patience with him. There's always the minor thing scratching in his head: The Neo Zeong II is still out there. Still rummaging around with Jona at the helm, that bastard who stole his ride. He still wants it back.
Those thoughts swirled in his head as he finally managed to rouse himself out of his current sleepy stupor, standing up and stretching from the chair oh so conveninently located nearby. He didn't have to go far ton make this meeting; Hell, he hadn't even moved much to try and go away of this place. Wanted criminality does that to a person.
The Da Xukong 0 is a familiar sight (and he had to agree on this notion of Too Many Legs; There was mobility and there was THIS) for minorly annoyed eyes. A distasteful scowl on spotting Yuliana, an eyebrow raised on seeing the Plus One inside. Another person? "...Better not have your taste in strange body things." A small mutter, out of earshot.
He does, however, crack a small, stifled giggle of amazement at the audacity to bring a folded whiteboard. The hell?
"Parminder?" An internal search of his memories, coming up with...Zilch. Nada. "Zoltan Akkanen. Where'd you drag him in from, Yuliana? Some Newtype Lab that found another plot to dig a few graves?" Intelligence aside, there was already a crashing reputation in his eyes. Anyone associated with Yuliana was...For lack of a better phrase, Extremely Suspicious On Multiple Levels.
He barely casts a glance over at Rita. Time had mellowed the ferocity of his barks, and in some people's eyes, it could be similar to two birds having an understanding while being in similar cages...however apt that comparison actually was. His own clothes were, for his credit, properly unstained and prepared, having that side of vanity inside him (instilled or not, that was another question entirely). The Sleeves logo, however, was nowhere to be found.
The other gal in the t-shirt...Eh. Vaguely familiar, maybe? There's a small nod of understanding; Don't trust anyone out here. HIs own mind is guarded as best as can be, a harsh bristle of muted animosity from the Cyber-Newtype, the faintest traces of red, of gold, of...something towards humanity as a whole.
"...Why the whiteboard, anyways? There's plenty of room if you need to scribble out something or other." A wide arm gesture towards the rest of the room.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Abandonment might even be the better option.
Unfortunately, Yuliana's here.
"Hey, I wanted to bring the Captain's whiteboard," Parminder grins, to Michele, "but all the little strings connecting the Newtypes together are real tough to move around, you feel me? So I brought my own! I'm a resourceful guy!"
Whether Yuliana actually has a whiteboard with hundreds of crazy Newtype connections, or whether it's a joke he just made up, neither of them clarify.
He proceeds to wander over to Michele's coffeepot, go "sweet, thanks," and grab her cup of sin-black coffee right out of her reaching hands.
"Nope!" He responds, cheerfully, to Zoltan, even though this is the second time he's poaching questions directed to Yuliana. "Hundo-percento genuine normal human guy! No wires in my head, and no chems in my blood. The chop shop next door didn't even have a profile on me," he laughs, "I had the good sense to go get my flu shots from the public clinic downtown. Never set foot in the place." He grins, leaning back against his suitcase. "Got busted for breaking into top secret intel as a civvie after I got sick of office work and got big into cybercrime, and they were basically like, okay, like, you wanna go to jail or you wanna work for us? So I did some spy shit for a bit, then spec ops poached me for a team they were building -- you know, hers," he tilts his coffee-cup towards Yuliana. "You know how they always got a guy on the radio doing intel? That's me, baby! I'm the magic voice in your head!"
"And you're just telling them all that for free?" Yuliana raises a brow, looking to Parminder.
"Chyeah, why not?" Parminder shrugs. "It's funny. 'Sides, this evil lair is a pretty sweet dig, might wanna go put my resume in with the hot evil scientist. Hola!" He salutes, to Sayaka. OH NO, HE THINKS --
Yuliana shakes her head, without bothering to correct him, and turns to answer Rita. "I don't care if you don't like him," she scowls, tone turning petulant. "I trust him with my life. The least you could do is extend him a little consideration."
(Parminder waves, cheerful and one-handed, at Rita. While sipping the coffee he stole from Michele. He is a criminal. He has done crime.)
Yuliana takes the necklace, and -- give her a shred of credit, at least handles the seashells gently. "It -- won't make up for what you said to me," she insists, voice tightening, a little. "What you made me do... she was so upset," and this she adds quietly, and Sayaka, at least, might have enough context to realise what Elisa being upset meant.
If she doesn't, she's not getting it; Yuliana would never volunteer the information. She looks down at the necklace, for a moment, fingers twitching as if she's debating whether to crush it or fling it away. Finally, she settles on, "... but it's very pretty," Yuliana sighs, instead, and tucks it into a protective fold of her cloak, where it obscures her neck.
"So, the whiteboard's here to be a cool projector," Parminder reveals, without much care for Yuliana's emotional moment, as he puts his stolen coffee cup aside to pulls some gear out of his case of goodies. A mobile projector, which he sets up to --
Never mind what the clown's doing, Shelby's raising her voice. Yuliana had missed her, coming in, with all her emotions over that little shell construction. She caan't very well miss her when she hears her, though.
Yuliana points right back at Shelby, with furious accusation. "YOU! You arrogant miscreant--!!" She turns, and her animation is borne of animosity, all anger boiling up: "What the hell is SHE doing here?!"
That they say these lines in exact sync may only serve to disgust them both. Yuliana hates it, anyway.
<Pose Tracker> Michele Luio has posed.
Michele has her coffee snatched, and almost shouts, though catches herself - mixed company is a bad time for that. She moves to make herself some more irritably, as she does listen to his story.
"You sound obnoxious for a radio intel guy." She puts bluntly, as she finally asides to Rita. "Not a chance in Hell, we've got a mixed group."
As Shelby arrives, Michele gives her a nod, but the instant fireball between her and Yuliana has her shift her chair a bit. "So. A projector. This must be some serious intel to require that." She nods. "If you two can *not* get into a roaring fist fight, that'd be lovely." She tells Yuliana and Shelby. She'd feel bad especially for Shelby, and a little for Yuliana.
<Pose Tracker> Rita Bernal has posed.
"Sayaka!" Rita shouts, as the Aphrodite Areia approaches. It's perhaps a bit too early of a greeting -- something that will be remedied when Sayaka is close enough to hear Rita.
Greeting the Director with a running hug, Rita laughs in delight. "I'm so happy to see you. I thought I'd never get to talk to you again! Thank you so much for coming by. We have a lot to discuss." Sad, and scary things. "And maybe we can do something fun, too. I've been making sculptures..."
It might be a little odd for Sayaka to hear Rita's been making art of the ruins of the Secret Lab and its attackers, but the Newtype spirit doesn't consider that fact.
Shelby is greeted with the same enthusiasm, but before Rita can embrace her, a finger is pointed accusingly..! Green eyes blink widely, looking from Shelby, to Yuliana. "Shelby, this is my best friend, Yuliana. Yuliana, this is my family, Shelby. You both came to help save Jona and the Earthsphere, right?"
A pause.
"Do you know each other?"
Rita and Zoltan, as the other Newtype remarked, have been... co-existing. That's a good phrase for it. Since deciding Zoltan will pilot the Phenex to save Jona, Rita has been slowly trying to get to know the man, with limited success. He's wary and bristly, for good reason. More often, however, the Phenex's radio has been set to play music Zoltan showed her. Ancient songs... Rita would rather be listening to Sheryl Nome, but they need to bond enough that it'll be comfortable letting him inside her Gundam.
"You don't look terrible." Rita says to Zoltan, as she passes by. "I like that your shirt is clean. You don't need to worry about anyone here, Zoltan. They're all people I trust the most."
Is that a compliment? It must be close to a compliment.
Parminder speaks of the Institute so casually, ruffling Rita's feathers. She glances sideways at Michele, in a sort of 'can you believe this guy?' expression. But Yuliana suffered the most from the Institute, and she seems to really like him, so Rita lets it slide for now. In fact, Yuliana requests Rita is kinder to him.
Bare feet make no sound against the cold floor of the Secret Lab as Rita approaches Parminder. For a long, long moment, she observes the... decidedly not-Newtype. Green eyes flick from his face to his hands. They're smooth. This man is exactly what he says he is. Computers, radios, all the things Rita's never been exposed to.
"You seem honest." She offers, quietly. "At least about what you've said so far. And if Yuli trusts you, then I trust you too."
There is only one notably exception to that rule.
"My name is Rita Bernal. I am the Phenex." Rita... pats Parminder on the shoulder, as he gets set up, a little awkwardly. "Thank you for helping us."
Hopefully having appeased her best friend, Rita looks back to Yuliana, beaming as the heart-shaped shell art is accepted. That smile fades when Yuliana mentions 'she' -- it must be the wife, Rita thinks, that woman is no good. She looks up into Yuliana's eyes. "I meant all of it. And I still do."
Now, she stands halfway between her chair (between Michele, and a little more distantly, Zoltan) and the space between Yuliana and Shelby. On reflex, she tries to peer into the future for guidance, only to be foiled by Yuliana's aura.
"Shelby is like us!" Rita says, to Yuliana, and then to Shelby: "And Yuliana is like us! We're the same. And we're here for the same reason. We don't need to fight!"
Green eyes look back to the Phenex, but the machine is still. She has never been one to weigh in on interpersonal matters. Thank goodness Michele is here to keep things calm. Rita gives her friend a grateful look. Michele has been to all sorts of school, she's the best one to handle this sort of thing.
<Pose Tracker> Zoltan Akkanen has posed.
"...You have a whiteboard of Newtypes?" The obvious question at Paramider's response, that eyebrow arching further up. That same inquisitve gaze flicking towards Yuliana. A whiteboard? Her? Paranoia or something else? ...Or maybe he was joking.
Granted, it's Yuliana. She only has herself to blame if people start assuming the worst, considering...Everything.
The answer to his own question, however, does bring out a click of his tongue. Regular human doesn't mean much. "Sounds like we'll be doing a loooooot of talking, then. Don't let us down, you hear?" Che, so he's a new recruit after he got burned. Probably on the run, too. Note that and start a betting pool on when he gets merc'd.
"Long shot coming from you, Rita, but, well." A shrug. "So long as none of them have the same idiotic furor you got." That being said, he does stay out of Rita's gift to Yuliana. It's the least he could do, watching her mope about for a spell. Whatever happened was outside the realm of his troubles, anyways.
It's the closest thing to a compliment he's gotten in ages. Mine them where you can, Zoltan is on the up and up now.
"Oi, oi. If you're going to fight, at least have the decency to do it after the big presentation is over." More in mind: Come on, just shut up. "Do it outside or in the water, at least Para's got something after a month of going out to get milk and chips."
<Pose Tracker> Sayaka Yumi has posed.
Sayaka actually has zero idea how to react to Parminder referring to the Fortress of Science as an evil lair and herself as the 'hot evil scientist'. "Seriously? That's a first." She spares a glance to Yuliana as if you say, 'You hang out with this dude? Willingly?'.
"I wouldn't call him 'hot'... but unfortunately, the actual evil scientist who headed this place passed years ago." Ol' Kenzo Kabuto.. would he be Parminder's type? "And Koji's way too much of a goody two shoes these days to call him that."
On a much more pleasant note, Rita greets her with a big, wide digital hug. "It's good to see you too, Rita." Sayaka answers with a smile. "Yes... a lot to discuss indeed. I'm ready to hear it all." She nods, gravely. "Sculptures, though? I'd like to see what you've come up with." In practice, it might indeed be a little horrifying to see the Warrior Beasts lovingly crafted into art.
But first... she isn't entirely surprised to see some fight or another break out in this loose coalition of people reluctant to work together for the 'greater good'. A frown emerges on her face, when Yuliana mentions how upset Elisa was because of something she did with Rita. So it happened again, did it? Sayaka doesn't intervene, letting the two women who've known each other for so long settle it themselves. She does worry for Shelby, though...
<Pose Tracker> Shelby Korts has posed.
She spares at glance at Zoltan at first, but Shelby doesn't connect the dots on who he is just yet -- her Newtype senses are a little off-kilter, and the voices she hears in people's minds ... she stays firmly where she is, a solid distance *away* from Yuliana. Meanwhile Parminder cheerfully setting up his projector, and Michele asks them to not come to blows.
"Oh, of course she has one."
Best friend.
est. friend.
That Woman is her best friend.
yuliana kafim
'You both came to help save Jona and the Earthsphere, right?'
"I-- Mmngh. Y-Yeah. I."
'Do you know each other?'
nother animated point of her arm. "She *assaulted* me. At my job!!"
"I--" Zoltan, of all people, the voice of some sort of reason in the face of all of this.
She doesn't sit down. For a second, Shelby paces back and forth, hands lifting, her face contorting as she tries to file and shape and organize not only her words, but her thoughts. It's a collision of feelings, until she finally stops, twists, and puts her fists on her hips, weight cocking off to one leg.
She looks at Sayaka and Michele next. "I'm not helpin' her if she gets herself in trouble."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"Whaat? Me? Obnoxious? But I'm just a little guy!" Parminder gasps, a hand flying to his chest in the wake of Michele's accusations.
And then he sips his (her) coffee.
Siiip.
He grins, to Rita. "Honest, huh? Yeah, it's the universal power of not giving a fuck," he says. "You see, I've never once given a single fuck. My fucklessness sets me free."
"More like you've never gotten a single --" Yuliana snipes over to him, only to be cut off with:
"Look, if our evil lair was better-located, maybe I'd have more luck finding the kinds of bears I'm actually into," Parminder shrugs. "Pretty shit dating pool in-house, you feel me?"
"I don't care and it's not my problem," Yuliana dismisses the whole complaint. She meets Sayaka's eyes, as if to say, 'yes, somehow, this is the guy I associate with'. There may be an actual eye-roll.
"See?" Parminder grins, looking back to Rita. "Complete freedom!" He doesn't seem that phased by a hologram patting him on the shoulder, even if she might have to reach up to do it. He's not quite six feet tall, but he's almost there. "Hey, nice flowers, btw," and yes he just says those letters in sequence.
Yuliana scowls, though, when Rita says that she meant what she said. "You don't know anything," she grumbles, but she's reluctant to get into such a painful subject in front of so many people. It's private. It's private business, and she shouldn't have said it to Rita in the first place.
(If people assume the worst, well, maybe Zoltan's right.)
"-- you wouldn't give me a simple courteous answer!" Yuliana yells, pointing to Shelby, in turn. She turns to Rita, and snaps: "She's nothing like me! I am not the same as her! That damn obstinate scar -- she'll just run away again!" But Zoltan has an excellent point, and Yuliana draws an agonised breath through her gritted teeth, straightening up. "Fine... fine. As if listening to Luio's ever gotten me anything but grief -- but -- fine," and perhaps that will have to be assurance enough that she won't be getting into a fist-fight, as Michele asks.
"Damnit," Parminder pouts, as he pulls out a boom-box and slaps it on the table beside the projector. "You guys just ruined, like, the whole highlight of this whole trip. Lame. Guess this really is a good evil lair these days... ahhh, easy come, easy go. Aight, guess we better boot this up..."
OST Interrupt: Five Iron Frenzy - My Evil Plan To Save The World https:''www.youtube.comwatch?v=Dyne7jtuKr8
Parminder proceeds to hit play to a track from Iron-Blooded Frenzy. Tragically, Shelby might even recognise ska punk. They play shows everywhere! "Is that entirely necessary," Yuliana starts --
"Duh," Parminder cuts her off, as the whiteboard serves as projection to an image of a Helim-3 tank field. "So, fellas, here's the dealio. Your boy's drifting to the leeward side of the helium-3 storage base. Once he lands there, he'll be able to use the gas tanks as a shield. They're stored in a non-critical state -- floating out there, they're just gas. But that's not what you're worried about, right?" Parminder taps a pointer at the board, showing all those individual clusters of tanks, hanging in space. "An overconcentration of Minovsky particles would easily move them from a stable force to something as mad as the Captain over here!"
"That is NOT relevant!" Yuliana interjects.
"Illustrative metaphor," Parminder shrugs it off, quite fearlessly. "Anyway, if that helium-3 undergoes a fusion reaction, it's bye-bye, birdies," and here he meets Rita's eyes, his grin slung sharp and easy across his face. "The mother of all colony drops... that's what you're looking at if that whole field goes critical, and destroys all the colonies nearby. Of course, for all those tanks to go critical at once, you'd need a catalyst like a strong Newtype, and that's why you can't just go charging in there to stop him directly." He taps his forehead, still grinning. "You're the matches to light the fire, birdies."
At least he's not looking at Yuliana while he says it.
"But I have great news!" He goes on, superimposing a green field around one of those slabs of helium tanks. "Crime!" Click, he moves to the next image, where the entire slab has disappeared. "If we just take those tanks and move them somewhere else, well -- hothead can't blow 'em, can he? Like he's gonna show up to the orgy and he won't find a single dick. Tragic, tbh." He does, in fact, just say the words 't' 'b' 'h' in that order. "Not that you have to totally deprive him -- even a reduction of 30% tank density would bring the order of magnitude down, because baby, it's exponential. One tank blows up a battleship. Two tanks blow up all their roaming vessels. Three tanks blow up the whole damn fleet. Four tanks..."
"We all know how to do basic exponential maths, Letda," Yuliana interjects, wearily.
"Four tanks blow up a colony," Parminder breezes past, cheerfully. "But it's not just about how many go boom at once!"
"Oh my God," Yuliana groans, burying her face in a hand, because she already understands the engineering principles.
"It's about their positioning!" Parminder clicks to another image, showing two tanks next to each other gobbling up a cartoon image of the Phenex, and then to two tanks on either side of the Phenex exploding with a big boom field which just barely crosses over her at the middle. "If you weed out those tanks so they're further away from each other, you need a greater mass of criticality to string all the explosions together!"
"Are you done." At least one of them isn't here to give a 101 explanation for babies.
"Yeah, I'm done." Parminder snickers, as he flips to another image. "Anyway, there's one more problem. See, the tank fields were moved to Denver Colony," and Yuliana does look up, sharply, at that, but Parminder doesn't even blink as he keeps talking, "and while they're under control of Sleeves remnants, right now, let's just say that point's big-time contested. Unfortunately, someone got us cut off from the military feeds,"
"THEY TRIED TO KILL ME"
"So now I'm stuck scraping my Twin Tiger back-doors to get anything these days. Women, right?" This, he asides to Zoltan. "Never thinking ahead. Lmao. Anyway, the Feds want to get at the tanks, and that means you've got to get in there and disappear them before they get there. I mean, I don't have to tell you what happens if you all run into each other at once pointing at each other like you all came here in the same stupid costume, right?"
<Pose Tracker> Michele Luio has posed.
"Right you are." Michele sighs at Parminder, glancing at Sayaka, Yuliana, and Zoltan, before nodding. "Good. We don't need blood on the floor to deal with."
As Parminder begins explaining things, Michele is attentive. "So any type of fighting, at all, will kill everyone. Unless, as you say, we move them." A pause to explain the relevant maths to Shelby and Rita quietly.
Michele's brain ticks about the Feds. "Then... we need an ambush. Fantastic. Like we didn't have enough stress. Where are they coming from? I can tap into *my* feeds and find an ambush point. If we're quick enough, no one will know we were ever there." Except for the ghosts.
<Pose Tracker> Shelby Korts has posed.
"I had to lead a convoy of miners, to safety. Because of your." Shelby's hands lift, fingers clawing out and making a few quick wild gestures. "Thing! You--"
The track starts and her head snaps like a rubber band to look at the projector and the equipment. The pink-haired young woman huffs again, crossing her arms low and setting her jaw to one side. She still looks angry -- feels angry -- and it's hard to hide it. It's hard enough being this close to Yuliana; not just for her past actions, but because everything is just ... twisting. Sideways.
She calms down for the moment, closing her eyes during *most* of the explanation-- though when Parminder starts talking about the tanks and the amounts that need to be moved, she actually starts counting things on her fingers and struggling to do the math-- thankfully, Michele starts to explain the amounts a little more clearly.
Shelby adjusts her glasses with a careful touch, frowning still and all the same. "My main unit is known. To, uh. Certain... members of the Federation." Her hand lifts a little, like she's trying to coax the words out of herself. "I'll have to use something more discreet. I'll talk to my mechanic."
<Pose Tracker> Rita Bernal has posed.
Rita brushes a hand toward Zoltan, sending a tiny wave of psychic power toward him, just enough to upset his ever-so-carefully placed bangs.
"We're the same." Rita says to the man, after that strange wind has passed Zoltan by. "The Phenex wouldn't have accepted you otherwise."
It takes a certain kind of furor for someone to still be screaming vengeance and wrath while getting burned alive by an angry spirit. But, his barbs are losing their thorns. They're getting through to each other, little by little.
Rita seems to relax just a bit as Sayaka hugs her back. Even the impression of physical affection is still such a rare treat, Rita can't help but sink into it whenever she has the chance. "Yes, I've been keeping them under the water so no one will notice, but I thought it'd make things look much nicer. All the machines are rusting into the ocean... It's not good for the fish, right?"
Shelby's distress echoes through to Rita, who takes her hand gently, looking at her with wide, miraculous-green eyes. "It's going to be okay. Wait-- Yuli, why did you do that?"
No question as to if Yuliana actually assaulted Shelby.
"Shelby is a wonderful person! She's family!" Rita says, urgently. In her mind, Shelby being family stretches to Yuliana, too. They're all bound together. Perhaps this is a mimicry of her first real understanding of bonds with the Miracle Children -- perhaps it's the only way Rita knows how to understand 'closeness'.
When Shelby paces, Rita lets her hand go, watching nervously. This isn't at all what she expected. The younger Newtype will come to a conclusion soon, Rita can feel it. Shelby is a good, kind person, with understanding and harmony in her spirit. There's no way that this will be anything but positive.
Green eyes blink at Shelby's actual statement. "Um. I think that's okay. I can watch over both of you myself."
Parminder is a little guy. Rita disagrees, having to crane her neck to meet his gaze. "Hmm." She offers, to his explanation of fucklessness. It's a term she's certainly unfamiliar with, but the concept is clear enough.
If Rita giggles at Yuliana's crass comment, it certainly is a glitch of the machinery -- a sound echoing where it shouldn't.
But Parminder likes Rita's dress, and that goes a long way to appease the Heart of the Phenex. She does a little spin for him -- her dress, naturally, staying exactly where it should to preserve her modesty. "Thank you! My friend gave me so many wonderful designs. This one is my favorite. I thought about making the flowers into birds, but I thought that would be a little too much..."
Rita, coming out of her spin, simply accepts Yuliana's words quietly. It's private, after all. She doesn't want to share their quarrel with this assembly any more than Yuliana does.
"Scar..?" Wide green eyes look from Yuliana to Shelby again. Maybe Yuliana doesn't know Shelby's history. That's okay, it's not Rita's story to tell. Yuliana straightens up, seemingly coming to a place of acceptance like Shelby, and Rita smiles. "Thank you."
You take what you can get when it comes to Yuliana's friendship. Just this acceptance is a big deal! Years ago, it wouldn't have been possible for her. Rita takes it as a gift, and smiles, beaming so widely her eyes squeeze shut.
Parminder pulls out a machine of some kind. Rita watches it carefully, startling when it begins to play music. Is this a part of his presentation? A glance to Sayaka, this time. She must know how meetings are supposed to go. Is this normal?
"Zoltan." Rita says, without looking at him. "What do you think of this music? Is this also the kind you like?"
It sounds very different, but she wants to be sure.
Leaning forward on her illusory elbows, Rita listens in. Part of her wishes she had some spare paper (or sand, now) to doodle on. It's hard to listen when her hands are still...
But this is important. It's about Jona. Rita focuses in, as hard as she can. "Don't insult Yuli!" Rita chastises, frowning.
"It wouldn't need to even be Minovsky. With the Monster, Jona is a powerful enough Newtype to make them go critical with his mind alone." Rita blinks in surprise at Parminder's metaphor, her frown turning into a little 'o' of surprise. "...but the rest is right. If I tried to bring the Phenex to stop him myself, the resonance would start the disaster all by itself."
"Crime!" says Parminder.
"Crime?" says Rita.
Parminder's manner of speaking is... very illustrative. Rita, raised in various nightmare laboratories and military bases, doesn't flinch. This is how most people talk, obviously.
"Thirty percent seems like quite a few tanks, still." Rita murmurs. She appreciates the math, even if Yuliana doesn't -- though her frown returns at the cartoon-Phenex being destroyed. "...I don't like that."
"No." Rita says, of Denver Colony. "The tanks cannot go there."
She waits, as if to see if reality will bend to her claim.
It does not. At least, not that anyone reports.
Rita's hands knit together, and her image trembles, turning pixelated at the edges. "They cannot go there." She repeats, dread in her voice.
Frozen in place, as if glitching, Rita is silent for long moments. She knows what waits in Denver Colony -- she helped save them, once before. But those spirits are very, very hurt. If they were given a chance to strike back at the world...
Rita thinks of her first moments with the Phenex. She thinks of how quickly her radios were silenced. And she was an adult, with two decades of preparation behind her. These spirits... are not the same.
"We must not let the tanks reach Denver Colony." Rita says, coming back to herself. "Denver Colony needs to be left alone. No one should go there ever again. Thirty percent isn't enough to take away, we have to get all of the tanks, stop them from reaching the Colony."
It's unusual for there to be fear in Rita's voice, at least, now that she's dead. Half-tilting her head, it appears she's listening for a moment. Her expression changes with the flow of an invisible conversation, until she gives a little nod, and speaks again.
"I support the idea of an ambush, and trying to take away the tanks. But if it fails, we must have another plan. We cannot let Denver Colony have the means to harm the world." Rita raises those otherwordly eyes to Michele, now, staring into her. "Michele. We need more Psychoframe. If the Neo Zeong II is used to create a Miracle, I don't have enough power to counter it. I'm a more powerful Newtype than Jona, and if I have enough Psychoframe, I can stop this."
"We need a lot." Rita adds, now looking to Parminder. "In any way we can find it. It doesn't matter what kind. Old, new. Used, fresh. Enough to fill a ship. The more we have, the stronger I will be, the more ready to counter." A pause. "Whatever is to come."
<Pose Tracker> Zoltan Akkanen has posed.
Here in the Fortress of Evil, he heaved a sigh. Come on, break it up. He doesn't say anything more at Shelby, but he's definitely got that look of "the last thing I want is a catfight between two people who might have a point but I DO NOT CARE, DO IT LATER" impatience about him.
That being said, he does pay attention to Paramider's presentation, however much his...eccentricities prickled at him. What was his deal, anyways? ...Other than the obvious. There's gotta be something in his mind that made him be...so disatisfying. Call it a gut instinct on a human scale. The small fluttering of his bangs does snap him out of his own ruminations, clicking his tongue as he readjusted those bangs back in. Damn this heat, damn this sun, damn this humidity. Thank god he wasn't dragged in towards the equator.
...The music was a little much, he had to admit. When has anyone ever given a good presentation about things with music in the background? DO something classical, do something like muzak. Idiots who can't present something well without this sort of buffonery...Hell, does anyone here recognize Voltaire? ...He doesn't want to find out.
There's a minute nod here and there, clealr yunderstanding the basic principles of exponential cascade. There's also the fact that he gets to see Yuliana mad. Never interrupt an enemy (or mildly disliked person) when they're being an idiot.
He merely clicks his tongue at Paramider's cue. Women? More like Literally Everyone. He keeps quiet. "Go in there in disguise, I getcha." Simple. Move the tanks, things go from big boom to small boom. Sure, the logistics of everything were more complex than that, but that is quite literally the last few minutes of Paramider's Potification promptly posterized. "What about blowing each one up individually?" The obvious question.
"The music? Bit much, bit overbearing. If you're going to present yourself that way, you need either the chops or the speeches. There were a few of the younger Sleeves into it. Seig Zeon and all that crap, reveling in the 'evil'." Air quotes included. "Still, not the worst." That designation belonged to the sappy pop idol songs about connections. Che, after everything?
"Still. If it's an ambush, what better bait would there be than someone who isn't Full Frontal?" Another shrug. "The Federation isn't going to absolve me, anyways."
<Pose Tracker> Sayaka Yumi has posed.
"Certainly not good for the fish." Sayaka agrees, letting Rita hold onto the hug for as long as she likes. "If nothing else, getting the Science Fortress Lab out of mothballs is good for cleaning up the area. I probably could've bugged Koji about that more often."
Parminder (mostly) stops fooling around and gets to explaining. Mostly, Sayaka says because he's still playing music to make his point.
Jona is drifting towards the helium-3 tanks with enough Minovsky force, or worse yet, unquantified Newtype power, to make them all go critical? Absurd. But possible. Sayaka is jotting notes of what they learn to pass over to Koji later.
Thankfully, Parminder actually does have a reasonable enough sounding plan. "Crime..." Sayaka mouths right after Parminder exclaims it. "A simple enough plan." Sayaka nods. "If it's scientifically impossible to prevent the explosions, the least we can do is minimize the damage to ensure there is still a world to live in."
But Rita has objections. She is not okay with the tanks making their way to Denver Colony, and she wants more than 30% of the tanks moved, as impossible as it sounds. "If nothing else..." Sayaka begins, as Rita explains she needs more psychoframe, more power. "The upgrades you requested for the Phenex are underway. Koji's working himself under getting those done... so you really should thank him next time." She can't help but worry, though. Not only do they have no chance of proving Rita's plan will work, betting on throwing as much psychoframe as they can, it puts Rita herself at risk, too. "We'll do everything we can, Rita. But I'd prefer to have a few contingency plans besides Psychoframe. ...The heroes of living will find a way, I promise."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"And did I stop you?" Yuliana issues Shelby, lip curling. "You would think, from your response, that I'd torn your little train from the sky. But I shouldn't be surprised you're unreasonable." She frames Shelby's efforts at Ra Shalom so effortlessly.
With the tiniest sliver of a shred of consideration, though, Yuliana is at least keeping six feet away from all the Newtypes in office. Which, by the way they're all making her head pound with the lack of them, is almost everyone here. Oh, Parminder is as psychic as a brick, of course -- though he's closed-off in the way people are normally closed-off, a simple lack of empathy instead of a crushing void of empathic connection -- and Michele doesn't pain her, and neither does Sayaka. The rest of them...
Well, she's being polite, and not pulling them into her aura. Really, she deserves a medal. ... then again, she did kind of just get a medal. Thanks, Rita!
"Crime!" Parminder echoes Rita's question, cheerfully. One might get the feeling he could keep up this call and response for some time, but -- he has other concerns to answer!
"Ahh, they can stand a little combat," Parminder assures Michele, waving a hand. (Did he realise that some of the labrats here wouldn't know how exponentials work, or was it just funnier to spell it out while Yuliana grows increasingly more bored? A mystery for the ages.) "It's stored as an inert gas -- so long as you don't send it critical with too much energy, I bet you could even blow 'em up. Yeah, bingo!" He adds, pointing finger-guns to Zoltan. "Doing them in one at a time is valid as hell! Though I'm contractually obligated to inform you that it's better to teleport them out than blow them up." Contractually obligated by whomst? Don't worry about Elisa's plans. Everything is fine.
He pulls out a big folder full of papers, and hands it over to Michele. "Looks like you're brains of the op, so look, it's all here -- short version, though? I reckon the Feds will probably come in from Londenion, unless they got secret Side 6 holdings I don't know about." A pause, and he looks over to Sayaka, to add: "Might be your wheelhouse, too. Anyway, aren't you still a Feddie cop? Shit, you ought to have pulled all this shit, you still have full access. Hey, can I borrow your computer for a sec?" DON'T LET HIM BORROW YOUR COMPUTER FOR A SEC.
Yuliana tries not to be mad at Shelby using a deniable suit when she spent a whole year as a Celestial Being agent using deniable masspro suits. She tries this for precisely 5.86 seconds before she gets mad about the similarities. Whether this is progress in the light of Rita's wild claims that Shelby is her 'family' is left as an exercise for the reader. "Why would I grasp her wrist so tightly? Only because she was too good to even speak to me," she answers Rita's questioning of her assault, perhaps belatedly. "Too stubborn to answer a simple question, and too flagrant not to insult me!" She sniffs, and adds, somewhere in the valley between haughty and defensive: "It was before you showed back up -- and you failed to mention she mattered to you, in any case." (That this is Elisa's logic written on Yuliana's heart is something else she fails to clarify.) "I'll not stand here and be faulted for something I had no way to know." She folds her arms, and for some reason, her cloak curls around herself too. That's normal. Don't worry about it.
(She definitely doesn't care that Zoltan is sick of it. This is the power... of fucklessness.)
"Must not, huh? Soooo, you got a time machine hidden in that war crime of yours?" Parminder jerks a thumb up to the Phenex. "They've already been moved to Denver. Past tense, baby."
But when it comes to the end of Rita's plans, it's time for Yuliana to be upset. "You idiot!" She snaps, lurching forward to grasp Rita by the holographic shoulders and shake her. (This isn't particularly impolite, because she's still not too close to the Phenex. Rita's hologram can cope with her emptiness, because that hologram is an empty gesture, too.) "The whole fucking point of me going to all this trouble was to stop you from burning yourself up with this shit! You think I don't know that upending a dump truck of Psychoframe onto that violator you call a mobile suit will burn you out?! I won't allow you to martyr yourself when we've already found another option! Even if the Kabutos are perfectly willing to facilitate your double suicide, I will not!" She won't thank Koji, evidently.
"You don't have someone on your side," she glowers, as she releases Rita roughly, "working so tirelessly to ensure no harm comes to you. And you're fool enough to embrace the harm as if there's naught can touch you as you are. You're no Goddess, Rita, neither omnipotent nor untouchable. Anyone who believes that is a bleeding fool, and they do you no kindness to say it."
Parminder, meanwhile, asides all too casually: "Hey, it's not my fault if you guys can't appreciate an approp BGM," as if Yuliana weren't having a moment here or anything. But maybe it's just what Yuliana needed, because she takes a breath, smoothing her hand through her bangs.
"... Zoltan's right, you know," she says, calmer. "He'll be a valuable asset in drawing Federation attention, if we end up running into them. Even if we're not able to sneak in unnoticed, if he's able to call their attention, our own saboteur efforts will be much easier."
<Pose Tracker> Michele Luio has posed.
Michele nods about the small amounts of combat, taking the files to look over. She's about to beckon Sayaka to come with her, but she watches Yuliana fight, first. And when she goes for Rita...
Michele... backs Yuliana up?
"Rita. You're too precious for anyone to lose again. We can't - *I* can't let you do that. You'll have to give the heroes of man, as Dr. Yumi said, a chance."
She doesn't note that she'll probably acquire the psychoframe anyways. Just in case they start to lose.
"Doctor, shall we go through this? We may not be friends, but two heads are better than one." Michele will head to partake with Sayaka, giving Rita one last look. Hopefully... she'll listen.
<Pose Tracker> Shelby Korts has posed.
"You--"
Her hand twists, palm down and fingers pointed out at Yuliana as her eyes close. She's trying to catch her breath. Trying to stop from doing or saying something. She's trying *so hard* right now. Shelby draws another deep breath through her nose, the fabric of her compression sleeves shifting as she crosses her arms.
Her head slants at Zoltan after a moment of thought. "Individually works, but. ... We'd still probably have to hit them. Hard and fast, o-or spread out to pop single tanks by ourselves, wouldn't we? Odds are security will call. ... For help. Unless we can damage their comms, or -- T-Teleport?" her eyebrows go up at that one.
Rita offers her own suggestion. Anser would probably never go for it. No way the Director would, either. Even still-- Yuliana, Michele... "Much as I hate to agree with *her*," Shelby says, "that much psychoframe would be incredibly dangerous. To, um... to handle. For anyone. Me included."
<Pose Tracker> Rita Bernal has posed.
Rita is clearly rattled. Not being able to see the future is scary enough, but this is worse. Having an idea of what might happen, but not knowing for sure? How does anyone survive this?
"Yuli, you know you make Newtypes sick." Rita offers, softly. "Shelby is very sensitive. It must be scary for her, not knowing what was happening. I'm sorry I didn't tell you before, but now you know, right? I hope everyone can get along."
It's spoken in that sort of sweet voice Rita uses when she's hoping to get her way. How much of this is a conscious effort to manipulate others versus her natural self is unknown, even to her.
Sayaka reminds Rita of the Phenex's upgrades, and Koji's intense effort to prepare them. She lowers her head bashfully, offering a tiny smile of gratitude. "Thank you. I'll be sure I make it up to him, and you, before--" She cuts herself off. "Before anything else happens."
A time machine? "No, that's the U--" Rita clicks her mouth shut. Parminder definitely doesn't need to know about that. Nobody should know about that, honestly.
Hearing the tanks are already at Denver causes a wave of distress to emit from the Phenex. Rita goes pixel-y again, squeezing her eyes shut. "Yuli, you were at Denver, back then. Do you remember what happened? There are people like us trapped. Their spirits. They've been alone, and angry, for far too long. They weren't ready, not like I was, and..."
It's difficult to say the rest. Instead, Rita looks up to Yuliana with a fearful look in her eyes, hoping her friend will understand.
It seems Rita's idea for the psychoframe power-up is... unpopular. Sayaka gently pushes against it, and Rita is about to speak up and thank her, when Yuliana grasps Rita's holographic shoulders. Though she can't feel the warmth of Yuliana's hands, the force with which she's grabbed shocks Rita into silence.
Rita has been dead too long to remember to gasp in surprise, but her eyes fly open wide. It's rare, so rare, for Yuliana to touch Rita on Yuliana's terms, uninvited, that even the somewhat-aggressive nature of this gesture is softened into something warm.
"I..." Rita starts, once she finds her voice. "...I didn't think you'd know that it'd burn me up. Any of you. I guess I'm not very sneaky."
Reaching one hand out, she gently touches Yuliana's cheek, managing a tiny smile. This is being loved. This is how Yuliana expresses she cares. Rita welcomes it, almost greedily. Memorize this moment. Remember the sharp contours of Yuliana's face, the way her hair falls, the emotion in her eyes. Never forget.
"But Yuli. If things go very, very wrong, and I'm not ready to counter the bad Miracle, everyone will die. The Colonies, the Earth..." Rita speaks softly. "Isn't it better if just one person is lost? I don't want to vanish that way, but if we fail, isn't it better to be ready?"
Rita can't see futures where Yuliana is present, after all. And Yuliana is stalwart. Even if her vision was as multi-faceted as it was before Rita burned half her soul away, hijacking the Neo Zeongs' psychoframes, there's no way she could tell them how this story will end.
"I'm sorry. I don't want to upset you. But all of you have people waiting for you. Living people. Who need the Earth, and the Colonies. And I'm already gone. I'm the best choice, if we have to choose."
Parminder, of course, trundles right along with his presentation. It seems to be what Yuliana needs -- maybe these two are truly good for each other? Rita wonders about it for a moment. If this man makes Yuliana happy, and isn't twisting her magic into something foul, then Rita was certainly too quick to judge him.
"I will trust in the heroes of the living." Rita promises, Michele, and Shelby, and Sayaka. "I promise. It's what I've gambled my life and death on from the very start. I can't tell you what's going to happen next, but it's going to be very scary. We must save Jona, and we must take the tanks away from Denver Colony. If we fail at either of those two things, I'm not sure we'll be able to recover. Any of us."
"Sometimes it's too late." Rita reaches a hand out. Parminder's projector glimmers with azure light, and displays a new image. A circle. A single stick figure is placed in the center, then another, then more, and more, and more, until they're overlapping each other, until no individual can be clearly seen. "Only the living can end something started by the living. But Denver Colony isn't alive anymore."
The circle fills with red energy, emanating from its center. Many dots pop into existence around it, and the red energy encompasses them all, gathering them into one mass.
"I am very, very strong. But I don't think I can overcome this on my own." Rita clenches her hand closed, and the image bursts on the screen, a cataclysmic, realistic explosion playing out, before the projector clicks, and returns to displaying what Parminder asked it to. "There are too many..."
<Pose Tracker> Zoltan Akkanen has posed.
Crime. What a loaded word. The way Paramider says it suggests clock-villain tomfoolery: Crime for the day, parties at night. Maybe. Maybe this is why its prickling him so. Something that people dedicate themselves to versus someone that plays it so damn flippantly. Crime, he says.
"You're just gonna dose yourself up on psychoframe and pray? I never took you for a druggie, Rita." A scratch at the back of his head, straightening himself out. Really, just more? A pure battle of brawn? "You could toss a few more Feds at Jona, give him reason to power down. Can't clock someone upside the head if they're battered."
He's performing the wise and oh so adult (wait, Yuliana's even older. She's beefing with a teen. Heh. Your fault.) stance of Not Interfering With Spats. The cloak seemingly tightening is in no way a factor for this decision, not at all. Mildly creepy. Still.
"She's right on that." Not a Goddess. Not some grand thing. Just a kid trying to figure some stuff out. ...Not that he's happy about where that's gotten him. "You're going to bring a kid back and then die." A chuckle. "Won't that set him off more?"
"Get better material. Try something baroque, you rock-minded punch-clock villain." Learn some damn class, Paramider.
...Wait, he just set himself up as bait. Right? Right??? Ah, hell. "Worst comes to worst, they'll flock if there's any sign of Char afoot. Even if it might be him, that's enough to send them on full alert thanks to Frontal and the man himself." Damn bastards.
Strange, to be trusted so. "...Hmph. If you're going to die, at least do it in a dignified manner, Rita." Humanity deserved to burn, but it damn well should struggle until he can cast his own judgement. "If you die there, I won't hear the end of it from at least three people here. More if they catch wind that I'm supposed to be one you're hunting." Che. So hard to try and assuage at least one argument.
"At least drug yourself up enough so that you can actually be cognizant when we're near Jona."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"Tch... if it matters that much to you," Yuliana glowers, when Rita plys her so sweetly, "I suppose it costs me nothing to leave her be." Yuliana isn't immune to manipulation, herself, even though she's a manipulative woman. Whether Shelby can trust the truce Yuliana accepts -- well. That's hardly Yuliana's concern. This isn't about her.
"You know very well ghosts can't touch me," she issues, sharp, even as Rita pixelises in the wake of her demands. Even so, Rita touches her cheek, and -- well, it might be strange to see, for some of the people present here. The way her angry glare cracks, when Rita touches her face, grief leaking through and dampening her lashes.
"Idiot," she says, again. "Don't say it'd hurt me, and -- as if you're so much better than me!" It's some vague hint as to that fight they apparently had; Yuliana doesn't explain, because she expects Rita to remember. "One person, sure, whatever, but --"
not you.
"You fu--ucking idiot," is how Yuliana says it, instead, and if her voice hitches in the middle of the word, don't worry about it. She's not emotional about this. You're imagining it. "That's why we're -- doing something about the tanks -- before he gets there. So you don't have to push yourself that fucking hard. Listen to Zoltan, for once in your life -- if you disappear, you must know we'll have no choice but to put down Jona for how violently his grief will madden him!"
Yuliana can be manipulative, too.
It's nice that Michele is willing to back Yuliana up, though. And while Yuliana absolutely hates being on the same side of any argument as Shelby is -- "Trust me, the feeling's quite mutual," she asides, dryly, as Shelby talks about the downsides of Psychoframe -- at least that damnable woman has enough sense not to send Rita to her...
... well, she's already dead. To her double death?
Parminder, meanwhile, looks up from where he's gone off to help Team Egghead work through those files, and tells Zoltan: "Nah." He flatly refuses to acquire a sense of taste.
Yuliana turns to the projected image Rita constructs, souls and souls and souls. Her jaw sets. "A sea of hungry ghosts, is it?" She asks, as her hand tightens to a fist, at her side.
She proceeds to punch Parminder's poor portable whiteboard, moments after the image clicks back to the image it once displayed. It goes sailing off to crash, unceremoniously, into the hot-pink knee of Shelby's Zeonic suit.
"They can't touch me," she says, again, all her venom redoubled.
(In the background, Parminder can be heard whining, "AW MAN," but this is not about him.)
<Pose Tracker> Rita Bernal has posed.
"Thank you, Yuli." Another soft, bright smile, one that spreads to Rita's eyes, as her smiles so rarely do. "I know I can trust you."
"You know that isn't how it works!" Rita chastises Zoltan. "And didn't you do the same thing, at Palau? Even working with Thorean and the Red Comet!"
She doesn't his hypocrisy home any more than that. They're bonding. It's a work in progress, but it does take effort.
"It's not the ghosts touching you I'm worried about, Yuli. They can do the things I do. Even if I can't touch you, I can touch things around you. I can touch the Phenex." Rita says, urgently. "They've been hurting for too long. They won't understand."
But Yuliana almost-sheds tears, and Rita brushes her hand under her friend's eyes. Yuli always has such nice makeup, Rita doesn't want it to get ruined. "I'm not better than you. We're the same."
A little smile, and a tilt of her head. "Listen to Zoltan?" Of all people, Zoltan. But that smile fades again. "I don't want to hurt Jona any more. He deserves a safe, happy life, after everything I've done. I want to give that to him. And to Michele, and Shelby, and you." A glance at Zoltan. "And even to Zoltan."
A pause, and then. "You know the Feds hate me as much as they hate you, Zoltan. They're just a little more quiet about it. I'm technically their property, still, even while I'm dead. There was paperwork." There's a reason she burned her body to ash. "Not to mention how badly Vist wants the Phenex. Between the two of us, I don't think anyone could resist the bait."
Rita hesitates, then. She hadn't truly considered what it would do to Jona if she was to save him and then immediately vanish. Looking down, she rubs her finger over the side of the least-broken table. "I don't want to vanish. I don't want to leave any of you." Even Zoltan, really. They're the same. He shouldn't be alone. Rita was alone, just for a year, and it nearly cost her her soul. "I can't drug myself, I'm dead!"
"But I do want to see him again. Even just once more." Rita says, sadly. "I've had so much more time than I thought. I didn't expect... Friends. New ones. Old ones. I thought I would just be a guiding, guardian spirit to all of you. I didn't expect that you'd make me real."
Holding her hands out before her, Rita turns them over, clenching her fingers and releasing them. An imitation of life. Somewhere in between. This form suits her more than Koji realized.
The poor whiteboard pays the price for Rita's sacrificial idea, and she can't help but giggle. It's so nostalgic, seeing Yuliana throw something across a room. It doesn't seem like so long ago that she was hurling dishes at weepy cyborgs...
"I won't let them touch you." Rita answers Yuliana's declaration with one of her own. "Not you."
<Pose Tracker> Shelby Korts has posed.
'I hope everyone can get along.'
Shelby gives Yuliana the thousand yard stare, waiting, watching her and her weird moving cloak all the closer. If anything, she feels -- she knows -- this truce is probably going to last only literally as long as it takes for them to finish this mission. After that, it's in the air -- but right now she's here for Rita.
It's even harder for her to keep her emotions in check while the spectral songbird is talking about self-sacrifice and the needs of the many; her fingers curl against her elbows as her arms cross a little tighter-- maintaining her distance from Rita and Yuliana but looking worried all the same. Even Zoltan agrees, in his way.
"You *are* real, Rita. Always have been. I never lost hope."
Watching the whiteboard ding off her Jagd Doga's knee, she looks back again and gives the death-stare of the century before letting out a loud huff and shuffling a few feet further out. "A-Anyway," she says, tugging her compression sleeves off, "I left my kit in the cockpit. I can go let my crew know... w-what, I'm doing here. See what I can, um. Wrangle for myself, for support."
Shelby also points at Parminder. "Live version was better."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Rita... wants her to be safe and happy. For all her crimes, she... wants that.
It's not Yuliana's fault she's getting emotional about it. Or about the care Rita expresses to making sure those tears don't do too much damage, either.
"Haa... I suppose I'm not popular with them, these days, either," Yuliana sighs, thinking of the Federation. "There's nothing the REA would like more than to get their hands on me again, I suppose. Well, not only them, now..."
Yuliana frowns, turning her face from Rita. "'Make' you real? You always were. Dr. Murasame tried to say you were just some pleasant lie I'd told myself, echo in the Psychoframe, but my Elisa's magic wouldn't have called you to our demesne were you some feigned copy of a dead woman." Her frown deepens, as she insists: "She told me. You're real as you've ever been."
She's surprised to hear Shelby echoing a similar conceit. She's more surprised to hear Rita giggling, when she loses her temper. Though -- it's fine if she appreciates her. That's all well and good.
Speaking of (not) being appreciated, Parminder says: "Oh, you seen 'em? Cool shit. Went to a Singapore showing once." Oh no. Oh no, Shelby DOES know punk ska. This can only mean terrible things --
Luckily, Yuliana interrupts for something even more terrible. If she sits with Rita wanting to protect her too long -- never mind. "I skipped breakfast to make this appointment," she huffs, quite ruffled, "so I hope you've got something to eat here. God forbid you were totally reliant on those absolutely ridiculous chip packets!" That's a barb for Zoltan, obviously.
... on the other hand, it could be worse.
She could have dropped the information and then immediately stormed out again.
Is this... better?
(Maybe it's worse, from a certain perspective.)