2023-11-13: .ranging and wonderinG
- Cutscene: .ranging and wonderinG
- Cast: Yuliana Kafim, Elisa Kafim
- Where: Amidst Goragon
- Date: During Goragon
- Summary: Goragon unveils an impossible future: Yuliana and Elisa living a normal life as park rangers and kaiju conservationists.
Yuliana keeps laying fire down on those Genociders -- and don't ask her why she tries so hard. It would be a simple thing to leave them to their fates, buried under a curtain of munitions. But...
She meant what she said, to Sayaka. She doesn't mean to let them die here. Despite the resistance they've lodged against the future, the people of Photon Power Labs sheltered and aided them. She can't let it go unrecognised.
Is that why she's putting herself in danger, now..?
Without remark, she hears the plea to clear Koji's way -- and she obliges, shooting down missiles before they can touch him.
... her efforts are rewarded, as they tend to be, with the end of the world as she knows it.
At least, this time...
She is not undone, as she faces up those endless cubes. She turns away, only to find more. She yells, "What the hell is this?!", and lifts her fist. She punches one of those golden cubes, scored with '並', ordinary --
"We've got one!" Yuliana Kafim exclaims, as her machine reaches over with a padded claw to clasp over a wild, winged kaiju. The gryphonesque creature shrieks, but soon quiets, when a giant woman approaches to slip a giant needle into the back of its neck.
"Very good," Elisa Kafim smiles, as the kaiju quiets to sedation. "I will remove the foreign material quickly. Hold it steady, my darling." And so she works, carefully, surgically extracting the material which was causing that kaiju to go berserk in the first place. "... there," she declares, finally, as she backs off to a safe distance. "You may free it, now."
The machine which Yuliana drives is specific to this purpose. With a great, careful grasper, a vast net, and a coiling, catching whip, her engineering skills have built the perfect machine for securing kaiju. It's what they do -- kaiju study and conservation. They're park rangers, protecting the vast Zaftran tundra from poachers and BioNet's collection efforts.
"That'll show those Britannian blowhards!" Yuliana crows, when the kaiju is safely delivered to sleep off its sedatives. "Honestly, throwing your theories out -- they call themselves scientists!" Yuliana doesn't say the word with any particular vitriol. She quite likes scientists; she married one, after all. And science and engineering are natural bedfellows. It's how she and Elisa met, after all, when Elisa came to her panelbeaters to get her Queadlunn-Inanna fixed after one particularly rowdy specimen. Yuliana decided not to go into the military, after some choice words from her mother about how unappreciative their country tended to be, so fixing machines was the closest she got to the front lines. Right up until... Elisa asked for her help designing a machine she could use in her work.
She does have ire for Britannia, of course. While most of her spite is reserved for those poachers who are desperate for biggest game hunting, she has plenty left over for the researchers who snubbed her wife. She's a quick-tempered woman -- but no more than should be expected, for someone who cares so deeply.
Of course, she's much kinder to their children. And after dinner, when they've bedded, she sips wine on the balcony of their rural bungalow with her wife.
"They're saying Amuro Ray's returned, did you hear?" Yuliana asks, looking over the tundra plains. "Leyasha was saying he's one of those 'Newtypes', on the radio... you ever heard of that?" Yuliana rarely has; like most women who haven't seen battle, it's largely a fairy tale, to her.
"It wasn't ever my area of research," Elisa shakes her head, "so I'm afraid I can't say." She speaks casually, of course, now she's not working. She's always been more focused on the job.
"I guess that just goes to show there's a lot of strange things we haven't discovered, yet," Yuliana muses, looking up to the sky. "Maybe it's even more wonderful than kaiju..." And there's no distaste in her voice, saying it. It's just an unexplored possibility.
"Maybe," Elisa supposes. "But kaiju will always be my wonders of choice." She smiles, warmly, and looks to her wife. "... alongside you, of course."
"Of course!" Yuliana laughs, and Elisa laughs, too.
This strange reality, these two normal women, it's --
impossible.