2023-08-30: The Choice, Refused
- Log: The Choice, Refused
- Cast: Yuliana Kafim, Rena Lancaster
- Where: Denver Colony - Approach
- Date: 2023-08-30
- Summary: Yuliana intercepts Rena after she meets up with the Phenex, and has her own tense discussion with her. Rena tries to convince Yuliana she's here to help -- but Yuliana struggles to accept help from Rena, particularly as she insists that she'll save both the ghosts of Denver colony and the Earth. Yuliana believes they'll have to choose between the living and the dead... but it's not as simple as Yuliana not caring about the dead. She just cares about one specific dead woman, instead. Rena is at least able to secure assurances from Yuliana that she'll let her try to save the ghosts, but will Yuliana's patience really hold out?
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Something is amiss at Denver Colony, and it isn't the dead zone of empathic silence around Da Xukong 0.
For once.
The Salamis Kai cruiser, Shandor, helpfully escorted them out here. But Parminder (he's Captain Parminder in that chair, how about those apples???) has no interest in busting ghosts, personally; he's staying at the outskirts to keep an eye on things, instead.
(If Elisa slipped him a proverbial fiver to be an extra set of eyes on the situation, well, this is not about that.)
Yuliana's keeping an eye on things, too, though she's watching different things; the IFF signals of her surprising set of allies, to be exact. They've spread out on the approach to Denver to get a better scope on how to approach the situation, but she's aware, in the back of her mind, that they are right at the doorstep of a pack of hungry ghosts.
It would be a little embarrassing if she wasn't paying attention and the Phenex was disassembled into open space. ... a little.
It means she notices when a foe meets up with them, though; and so Yuliana sets the Da Xukong to move through open space, its eight legs orienting in space through pressure releases and jets at their spidering joints, to lazily intercept the foreign suit.
To intercept...
"Well, well, well," Yuliana's dulcet tones cut into Rena's radio, as the smaller wanzer makes contact with Gaia Gear. "Renalle! What a surprise to see you here! Again." Somehow, her tightened grip around her clutch and the way her teeth grit together in her smile is audible. "I rather would have thought you'd never want to return..!"
Her smile stretches over her face like a deerskin pulled to dry. "Come to plague me again, have you?" She asks, knife-sharp expectant, as her thumb drums over a big red button on the stick she's manipulating.
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
Rena Lancaster is on her way towards Denver Colony. She hasn't fallen in with the rest of her team, quite yet; the Gaia Gear Alpha soars away, the resource satellite it visited earlier but a distant speck in its rear view monitors.
And Rena jerks up, when she hears that voice. She doesn't, typically, mind someone calling her 'Renalle.' When Leina says it, it's a reminder of the good days of the past. When Yuliana says it...
"I made a promise," she says. "To help those inside. The ones left behind."
She tenses, as she looks at the Da Xukong 0, and takes it in for a moment. Then, she lowers her chin, and her eyes stares at Yuliana. Her fingers tense. "...I'm not here to plague you. I'm not here about you, Yuliana. Why are you here?"
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana's lips curl over one too many teeth, all crowded together in her mouth. She tests the air against her fang with a long indrawn breath, hissing between the gaps created by those strange angles.
Finally, finally -- after a moment which feels more like a lifetime -- she flips the casing back over that button, and almost lazily reaches over to flick a series of switches. Her weapons go from hot to standby with the gesture, promising that Yuliana at least isn't imminently going to blow Rena into Denver Colony in a thousand pieces.
Not that having to go through one more step before destroying Rena has ever stopped her before. Anyway.
"Tch," her tongue clicks against her teeth, as she settles back into the harnesses strapping her into Da Xukong. Her voice is arrogant as ever. "Unlike you, I'm here to help the living. I don't expect you to understand. Rather, I expect you to stay out of my way," she lays it out, and she thinks she's being remarkably considerate in being so clear.
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
"I'm here to help the living. I'm here to help them both," Rena says, with a moment of staring at her. Rena grits her teeth -- and she doesn't power her weapons up. She doesn't want to fight, in this case; today, Rena has somewhere else she needs.
"I'm not here to stop you from helping Rita or anyone else," she says. She frowns for a moment more.
"As long as you're really helping," she adds, her voice a little icy.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"Both. Greedy little thing, aren't you?" Yuliana wonders, archly, and the rise of her haughty voice once more mirrors the way her eyebrows rise under the helmet of her normal suit. (One raises less than the other, the natural consequence of the scarring down her face.)
Her teeth settle against each other again, habitually clenched in her present company. "So Rita's told you a tale already, I see..." And of course Yuliana's first instinct is to assure Rena that she's here to betray them all, that of course she is the scorpion, just look at her.
Why wouldn't she have those urges? The alternative is being on the same side as Rena.
"Fool girl," she issues, instead, her own voice growing cold. "Whose idea was it, do you think, to thin the Helium-3 fields? If not for the Federation, there'd be no fuel left here! But we're out of time," Yuliana growls, all the tension rolling forward through her shoulders into her deathgrip on her clutch, "Jona is coming, and this world will fall."
Not by her hand, this time, but the deadly way she says it certainly leaves it to interpretation.
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
"Wanting to help people is greedy," Rena says, a little flatly.
She grits her teeth, then. She doesn't like the idea that Rita told her only a tale. Rita told her to not do this, essentially -- though she didn't stop her, either. She glances downward for a moment. "That was smart, thinning them out," she admits. "But... you're wrong."
Rena looks up, then shakes her head.
"We'll stop it," she says. "All of us, together. We can stop it, because we haven't come this far to make a world that we'll let one person rip away from it. Can't you just believe in the rest of us?"
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"Quite so," Yuliana says, and she has more than enough fluctuations in her voice for the both of them. "What will you do, Renalle, when the needs of the living conflict with the needs of the dead?"
Rita, meanwhile, told Yuliana to work with Shelby. She never specified Rena. If she really felt so strongly about it, she should have been specific.
Honestly, if even Yuliana can learn how important that is...
"I don't need your help!" Yuliana spits out, louder than she meant to. "You couldn't begin to comprehend the factors at play here! What's at risk! You with your fool dreams of saving the dead -- THEY'RE ALREADY DEAD! Why would you care a whit for the sake of --"
There's the sound of a dull thud from Yuliana's radio; it's the noise of her own fist impacting with her console, followed by her breath growing ragged. "Shut up," she says, independent of anything Rena may or may not have said.
(Rena seeks to save a colony of ghosts; Yuliana's ambitions are far more modest. She's only in this to save one ghost.)
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
"I..."
What will Rena do? She doesn't know. A part of her, a stubborn part of her, wants to say she will find a way to make both work. But she wavers, because sometimes, the world isn't so simple -- and isn't so kind.
"...I'll do the best I can!" she says. "I believe I can reach them both. I'll put my faith in that. And that my friends will help me, when I stumble."
She bites her lip, then she looks down after the thud. "Even if you don't need my help, what does it hurt you to accept it?" Her voice is quieter. "I want to help all of the dead here. All of them, Yuliana."
Even the one ghost that she does care about.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"The best you can?! Just believing, with faith, you -- you think you can hold hope and love in your hands and change the cruel fate of this world?! Soft-hearted sentimentality!" All that might be unsurprising, as the insults fall from Yuliana's lips. This, on the other hand: "It never served me, before Elisa came! And you -- you do not have anyone as dedicated as she!"
All those things Yuliana's criticising about Rena...
... she sees in herself, just the same.
If her breath is torn and uneven in the wake of it, don't accuse her of crying. She might have thought to turn her radio off, but she's feeling so erratic, in the shadow of Denver. She has always grown passing strange, hounded by too many transgressions.
"There's no way you'd help me," she insists, finally, voice wound whining-tight. "No way in hell. And you don't appreciate why at all... stupid girl, you think her a goddess, don't you? Just some shining beacon of light whispering nothings to you! We went through hell... I put her through hell... she always took their slings and arrows upon her. Never tried to make them hit me instead. Now... now the Earth's endangered, and at every turn I always must say, stupid girl, there's no need to burn yourself to bits, you are not the sole steward of humanity, it is not yours to sacrifice all you are! And every time she pushes against it, she cares for Jona, she..."
Who is 'she'? Yuliana just assumes Rena knows she's talking about Rita, as her words unlatch from sense and trail to mumbling.
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
"I've done it before!" Rena snaps back at Yuliana, her voice growing heated for a moment. And then she squeezes her eyes shut, as she hears Yuliana berate her. That isn't so different; she's been yelled at many a time before, and doesn't doubt she will again.
"And sometimes it wasn't enough," she admits. "But... sometimes it is, and those times are important. You can't accept only things that work all the time."
Her eyes narrow, then she adds: "Don't talk about Eight and Annie like that."
She quiets after a second, though. Rena frowns for a moment, as she listens, and then she shakes her head. She puts it together with the name 'Jona.' She knows that name; she knows that Rita worried about him.
"Rita's not a goddess," she says. "She's... she's a person who's not that different than us. She told me..." She said that Rena doesn't carry her mother's sins.
But Rena isn't going to lie to Yuliana today.
"...I don't want her to burn away," Rena says. "I want her to carry on. So yeah. I'd help you, because it's the right thing to do."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"Tch..." Yuliana growls, and at least doesn't double back to insult Anita and Eight a second time. (Even if, objectively speaking, neither of them will ever be anything like Elisa Kafim. Yuliana's right, she thinks, and she should say it.)
Still... accepting solutions which only work sometimes... she'd like to dismiss it out of hand, but it's not that easy.
"The right thing to do...? Don't make me laugh... no one believes me. If no one accepts I'm here to do good, why should I waste my time and my breath...? And if I've not wasted it, why should I trust you'd believe me anyway, just like that...?" All the wind ripped from her sails, it's difficult not to hear the way Yuliana's sagged against her bindings, hidden in the scorpion's cockpit.
And she's asking, an edge of pleading to her tone as she tries to square it in her mind: "How... how can you and I possibly be on the same side, when you understand so little?"
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
"Then do the right thing anyways," Rena says. She frowns, and her eyes glance to the side for a moment. "Because you've lied to me before, and it's not about what you said, but what you did. If you do the right thing -- if you try to help the people here...."
Rena looks back at Yuliana, and her expression softens. "I'd believe that. And..."
She looks down. "You decided for me that I don't understand," she says. "I haven't been hurt the same way you have. But I've still been hurt and used by people. And besides."
Rena sighs. "We don't have to understand to be on the same side," she says. "Not if we'll fight for the same thing."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"I am going to save the Earth," Yuliana says, again. "I will not suffer the ocean to swallow the shores a second time. I absolutely reject the crater where ten million lives once stood. If it spares Colonials in the process, that's lucky for them, isn't it?"
Because it's not just Denver colony, under threat, here. Every neighbouring colony is in danger if these helium-3 tanks go critical -- and with so many colony drops...
"And I will..." This, with more effort, as if dredged from her throat with a broad net, "... attempt to preserve Jona's life in the process. He's a worthless wretch, if you ask me, and more trouble than he's worth -- but it will be a pain if Rita grows emotional."
She draws in another breath, all hissed between her teeth. "Do you understand that much?" She issues, archly. "Of course you could not understand what Rita and I have seen -- what these damned souls have seen -- but I am generous, and will pretend you haven't compared those torments with your charmed existence. I will tell you my precise aims. To save Rita -- to save our Earth -- I will eat every other ghost on this damn wreck." She needs no visual feed to convey the way her jaws yawn open, at her threat, fang glinting off the light of her instruments. "If you mean to save them all, you had best see the disquiet dead still, that I am not compelled to act."
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
"You still look down on spacenoids," Rena says, quietly, but she doesn't do more than linger upon it. Because, at the end of the day, saving the Earth means saving the colonies. The helium-3 tanks cannot be allowed to go critical.
"Just because I haven't suffered the same way you have doesn't mean I haven't been hurt," Rena says. She frowns for a moment, though. "We have to save Jona. It'd break Rita's heart to lose him. I can see that. And..."
Her eyes narrow, at that.
Rita told her they may have to kill the ghosts. But she didn't want that, and that is a reason to work to save them. It was a promise Rena made, and even if it was months ago, it seems even more important to keep.
"I'll find a way to save them," she says. "We can't pick between them. Because... I don't think we'll save Rita if it's at their expense."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana sniffs, still perfectly capable of projecting haughtiness, and it's all the answer she gives as to her opinion of Spacenoids.
(It's an unkind opinion.)
She scoffs, as well, at the idea that Rena has been hurt. Perhaps it's no wonder she has such trouble accepting her life has also been hard; in doing so, Yuliana would have to accept that she's brought Rena suffering.
And in her mind, Rena still deserves it.
"You can't pick," Yuliana points out. "I very much can. I value Rita over that conglomerate of souls, and I will not allow them to place her into a position wherein she must destroy what remains of her self to save the world. Because Rita, you see, is as preferential as I -- she cannot suffer this world to end. Nor, I suppose, her friend to die." Yuliana takes a deep breath, and it would be nice to say it's to steady herself. Wrong, though. She was just talking too long without taking a proper one. "She has more sense than you. She may cry about it, I'm sure, but she'll recognise it's for the good of us all."
Another breath. "But I did just say I'm feeling generous," Yuliana allows. "So I will give you your chance to quiet the dead. Reason with them, if you're able. If they don't kill you where you stand." Which is also fine with her, judging by the edge of contempt to her tone. "Do your best to save both, won't you? Because when you fail... I will still be here, to do what must be done."
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
The scoff prompts a narrowing of Rena's eyes. But she knows, for a fact, what Yuliana thinks of her.
Rena frowns when Yuliana says she can pick. And, perhaps, that's the difference between them. Rena can't -- or maybe, more accurately, she won't.
She sighs, then, and her eyes look down. "I don't know about that," she says. "I think just because she can pick doesn't mean she wants to."
Then she looks back up and frowns at the scorpion-like Wanzer. 'Generous,' she says. "Then I'll reach out. I'll do everything I can. And... we'll find a way to save both." The Gaia Gear Alpha's thrusters begin to come online, with a hum through the whole cockpit.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"Oh, no one ever wants to," Yuliana says, surprisingly softly, and with something like a shade of regret thrown over it. What she must be thinking of...
"But that is why the strong must take that burden from the weak." The end of her sentence does not begin with a trailing edge; it is more decisive and firm, and the strength she cites must surely come from authority.
(Or, if you please, authoritarianism.)
"Go, then," Yuliana allows her. "I will not stop you. I welcome you to our partnership, Renalle... with me." She laughs, saying that, unkind and cackling just a little too long. "Haha... hahahaha... hahahahahaha!"
Her knife-sharp grin is audible. "We're gonna save the world, sweetheart," she says, laughter still on her lips, as she engages the thrusters in Da Xukong's shoulder-coils to send her moving back towards the Phenex's position.
(Over the radio, she's still laughing.)
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
"I don't think we should take from anyone. Just share it," Rena says, with a frown on her face. She looks at Yuliana for a moment, her expression hardening as she laughs; she can practically see the grin on her face.
"Just don't get too impatient," Rena says.
And then a moment later, she fires the thrusters. The white Mobile Suit takes off -- soaring into space, away from the Da Xukong as it blitzes away.
The Gaia Gear Alpha soars onward, towards the distant Denver Colony -- and to her friends.