2024-01-28: .i have always forced your talents forwarD
- Log: .i have always forced your talents forwarD
- Cast: Yuliana Kafim, Shari Loom
- Where: The Photon Power Labs
- Date: 2024-01-28 (ICly April 0098)
- Summary: After fighting Hustler One in Isaac City, Shari helps cut Yuliana out of her slagged Ichinana, and talks to her about the battle and her plans for the future.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
In the end, they stopped Asciel. Didn't they?
...
One of the Ichinanas had to be towed back. Melted in places from unimaginable heat, carved and scored and battered, it's taking longer than expected to get the cockpit open and retrieve the pilot. (Who IS alive -- all expected life signs are still present. And --) "Just go," the woman in the cockpit says, sounding a touch bored. "This is hardly the first time I got stuck in a machine. You've got things to do."
Which explains why it's just the hangar workers, around here, when the cockpit finally opens. The woman inside has been quiet for some minutes by the time they get her out, leaning on one side of her seat and drumming her fingers on a knee. She's dressed in her emerald and black pilot's suit, of course -- the extra protection for her tentacles simply wouldn't be possible otherwise. And she is, in fact...
Yuliana Kafim puts a hand on the side of the cockpit, and climbs out through the hole they've carved.
"Nice work," she says, distantly, as she takes off her finned helmet.
<Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
That's a really battered Ichinana. Shari Loom, when she sees out the window a mobile suit being towed, is reminded of how often Yuliana would come back like that after a mission.
Cue now, of course, and--
Shari figured out that it was Yuliana a little bit ago. She should have left on the spot. She should have made sure to be very far away from her. But at the same time, she'd heard it had been rough, and...
Well, Shari's feelings got the better of her judgement, and those feelings include 'getting to carry a blowtorch', because man that's cool.
She flips the mask up when Yuliana comes out. "Hey," Shari Loom says to her Aunt. "I souped up their blowtorch. It wasn't cutting it." Pause. "No pun intended."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana told everyone important to go about their business, and so she's visibly surprised, weary and shaken up as she is, to see Shari holding a blowtorch. (She is, at least, not terribly injured -- even after she disabled the Combat AI designed to ensure pilot safety, the Ichinana is a machine which makes sure the cockpit isn't so easily compromised -- but it's difficult to get through what she went through without being thrown around a little.) "Hm," she grunts, looking from Shari's welding mask to the blowtorch.
Processing... calculating...
"You did, did you? Let me see." And she reaches out with one of those tentacles, to take the blowtorch if Shari's willing to offer it. Why her tentacle? Well, it's because her snakes are just long enough to reach someone outside the default range of her aura -- their reach, when stretched out instead of coiled beside or behind her, is closer to seven or eight feet.
One may recognise this as the extra distance she needs to drag someone into her sphere of influence. The Empress made her into a better predator in more ways than one.
But it also means she doesn't have to get too close to Shari, now.
<Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
Shari does like surprising people. She's in a good mood to look at her, though some of that may have to do with the use of serious power tools. She's eighteen now; it's legal for her to use a blowtorch without supervision!
Shari considers for a moment herself before offering it to the tentacle snake as requested, and indeed; it's more efficient (and thus more powerful) than the usual kind they use, based on a couple of minor changes that Yuliana can recognize.
She notices that Yuliana hasn't come to see her more closely, and maybe that's part of why it's fine, too. "Using Photon Power even in a blowtorch is a pretty good idea, but it doesn't need as much piping as it has."
A pause. "You OK?"
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana brings the blowtorch back to her, and grasps it in her hands as she turns it over, examining it. "I can't say I've been briefed on the Photon particulars," she remarks, dryly, "but just taking it as a power block, this is decent work. The way you've rerouted the gates to get a quicker full initialisation time is clever. It's going to overheat if you run it on full power for too long, though. Look here -- the piping you cut out was serving as a heat sink. That's why it wasn't burning as hot. It was a safety measure."
And it might be entirely familiar -- the way Yuliana judges Shari's work after she brings back a machine in shattered pieces. Many times she totalled the machines she borrowed for Celestial Being's missions, and many times she forced Shari to fix them...
... and when Elisa let her stick around to see what she did instead of calling her away, she assessed her work. She saw her potential, and she was trying to teach her something.
She grasps the blowtorch in her tentacle again, and reaches out to hand it back to Shari. She's quiet, for a moment, as she considers that next question.
"... I should... sit down," she decides, at length. "Will you...?" Sit with her? Be going? Yuliana doesn't finish her sentence, trailing off with that delicate rising tone.
<Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
"Thanks," Shari answers. "Yeah--I think I could do better, if I had a chance to sit with better tools, but short-term fix was fine for getting you out." She nods along, thoughtful; it is familiar. There are things Shari can do that no one else can... but she's a better engineer than she would be even so for Yuliana's efforts.
Shari takes the blowtorch back and waits. Then, when Yuliana decides to sit down...
"I'll hang out for a few," she says, and gestures; there's a place for Yuliana to sit down nearby, though Shari will be distant enough not to get into her sphere of influence, judging from the arrangement. It's fine.
"Until the medical team gets here. How's that?"
It's a risk, but...
Well, it's fine.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"I appreciate it," Yuliana says, which isn't quite 'thank you', but Elisa has made her feelings on certain expressions quite clear. "It's good work, for a hack job. Just remember to fix it up properly later, or you'll end up at the hand clinic." Yuliana tends to be scornful of safety measures, but that doesn't mean she's going to encourage tools that destroy the delicate implements which are her hands. Even she appreciates how much trouble those injuries can be, for an engineer.
Or someone she doesn't care about might get hurt. She -- totally cares about that too. Of course she doesn't want anyone to get hurt. Obviously.
Shari points out some seating along the wall, and Yuliana goes to collapse over there. "... sure." They're some nice, comfortable benches which suit letting the workers here take a break, so naturally there's a mini-fridge plugged in beside it. One of her tentacles snakes over to open it, and she grabs a can of something pineappleish, tossing it over in Shari's general direction before she takes one for herself as well. Did she just steal someone's soda?! Well, maybe it's not someone's specific can of soda. Maybe there's just a bunch of soda in here for anyone to grab while they're on break.
One can only hope. Yuliana has already stopped thinking about it. Crak-pssshhhhh, her fingers find the tab and open it; her short nails are terrible at sneaking in underneath, but she can leverage enough force that it doesn't really stop her.
"I wonder if I should have been out there," she sighs, looking down at the can. "Do I really want to help, or am I just trying to prove my worth to another lab...? It's not that I think Sayaka would be like that, but... it's not so easy for me to shake that kind of thinking. Anyway, I guess I got through to that other woman, but there's no telling if there was any point... and the AI got away without facing any justice to speak of."
She frowns, fingers clutching the can.
"I just kept thinking about what that awful program said to me... before she destroyed everyone and left. That my Empress was a delusion... not even a woman, just an it, just an amalgamation of pain and madness. You know what she called Her? 'Monstrous warped dejection'! As if she knew Her just by fighting Her once or twice... I'm not making it up. I'm not making it up," she insists, again. "I'm not delusional, I -- it happened. It's happening. Isn't it?" And it is not by Asciel's hand that it is so easy for Yuliana to question her reality -- but years of unsteadiness have made it an obvious avenue.
(When she was first getting to know Shari and Elisa, she wasn't nearly this easy to confuse. ... Shari can probably guess what happened, with what she's recently seen, even if it was easy to miss for a long time.)
<Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
"Sure," Shari says to appreciation. She is putting herself out a little, but she's not the sort of person who draws attention to that much. She catches the soda and says, "Totally. I might work on the actual design, too." Since she can tinker with that, and they do take some of her suggestions--well, they take them all seriously. But she only makes a few.
"Thanks," she says of the soda, and pops it open. She doesn't think about whose soda it is, either; she is not that good at morals yet. But Yuliana's questions are a little more philosophical than she'd expected, too. "...No, Dr. Yumi's not like that," she agrees. That's the easiest part to say. But the program...
'A delusion', Yuliana says, and Shari frowns sharply. "What?" she says. "That's stupid."
"No, you're not making it up." Shari takes a seat, holds the soda but doesn't drink until she's finished, "I can account for it--the Empress is real. I can prove it, scientifically." Ssssip. It gives her a moment to think. To think about how different Yuliana is after...
"People act like AI are nothing but logical machines, but once they get I enough to be AI they have more than just logical suppositions, right? They have biases and ideas and things, like anybody else."
"...Anyway, I dunno what you 'want'. But I know you don't like to sit on the backline while everybody else handles things. So if you ask me, you're not just trying to be useful."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"You should," Yuliana says, because Shari has engineering gifts and she should use them. Whether Yuliana encouraging her might have the opposite effect isn't something she gets as far as thinking about, because obviously Shari appreciates her mentorship.
It's not like she's been avoiding her all this time! They just haven't run into each other, coincidentally. Surely.
She hums vague affirmation, when Shari says that Sayaka isn't like that -- and she doesn't call her a doctor, unlike some other people associated with the PPL. (Because Sayaka isn't a medical doctor, and so there's no need to include that warning.)
Yuliana sips at her own can of soda, endless eyes closing, briefly, as Shari affirms that it's stupid. "Of course... Her divinity is a simple fact. She exists, and Her power is plain for anyone to see. The North Pole is proof of that..."
She takes another drink, and puts forward at least some effort into noticing how cool the liquid is after the heat around her cockpit, the tickling of the carbonation, the way it doesn't really taste like pineapple but instead the corporate presumption of what a pineapple would taste like if it were perfectly marketable.
"You're right... she's certainly not logical. She laid out all her logic for us, and it was utterly incomprehensible! A clashing series of ideals which couldn't possibly operate in harmony. Maybe she realised that, in the end... I don't really know. My cameras were all slagged, but the audio feed was still working on one of them, so I heard everyone being attacked... she must have backed off, though. That 'AC Nine-Ball Seraph' she was using might have even been a match for Emptear -- she could have easily killed us all."
Yuliana falls silent, for a moment, looking over at the slagged Ichinana she crawled out of. "... and I guess you're right," she adds, at length. "I've always preferred to be on the front lines... maybe it's the way I was designed, but it's still how I am. That -- Atrytone, or Asciel, or Hustler One, or whatever she's calling herself now -- she might be a miserable woman who makes me miserable around her, but it's not as if I haven't missed active combat, either. Backing Sayaka up is the first time I've deployed since I snuck in to get back at Dr. Hell... there's nothing like the rush of being behind a good set of controls. I told you that you're entering a contract when you get into a cockpit, didn't I...?" She wonders, looking over to Shari again. "Taking up a war machine expresses your willingness to fight -- accepting the terms. You might kill your enemies... or they might kill you. Even if you want to play nice, there's always that risk... you can't take a weapon like a Mobile Suit lightly."
She takes a gulp of soda, and breathes out, a grin crossing over her face. "But it's only getting that close to death that I feel this alive," she says, more eager. "I love fighting. There's nothing better!"
<Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
It's fine. Shari can appreciate that Yuliana has some valuable insight, anyway. And when she's trying to pass on knowledge she's not so scary as when she was holding onto her demanding a Solution to the Empress.
"...Yeah," Shari says, a little less hype about the North Pole's situation than Yuliana might be. She doesn't have to try to enjoy the soda; the cold is even better after the heat of the safety equipment and the blowtorch.
"I see... That's pretty powerful." Shari can't be that calm about 'could've killed them all easily', but Yuliana seems chill about it. As chill as she gets, anyway.
"..." Shari listens. "Sounds like you," she agrees after a few moments. "You did say that. I guess it's why I'm not so keen on getting back into combat, myself. I mean, I could, I'm not a bad pilot or anything, but..."
But she doesn't really want to fight. "But I know now more than I used to, how heavy these machines are. What it means, to fix up something that goes to war."
War. What a word.
She watches the grin. "...See," Shari says, "I get that high... other ways. But I'm glad you came back today, anyway."
"It's good."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana doesn't have to be scary. Maybe that makes the times she is scary even worse. Anyway.
Is she hype about the North Pole? Well... she'd be able to be happier about it if everyone else didn't keep being such a downer about it all. They're all upset about it and it makes Yuliana think they don't appreciate it and they say it's just like Second Impact and Yuliana doesn't like Second Impact so how can she enjoy the North Pole when it's like Second Impact!
It would be so much easier if everyone appreciated her and her wives.
"It's not nothing," Yuliana agrees, when Shari talks about the weight of maintaining those machines. "And you can't control who someone shoots with a gun you polish up, either. Once you give it to someone else... it's really out of your hands. Even if you're working with good people, the battlefield has a way of invoking impossible decisions. Well... I can understand why even working on things in the hangar would be harder for you, now." And Yuliana does sound like she's sympathising with Shari; indeed, she is sympathising with her. She's even empathising with her feelings. Feelings which Shari never said in so many words; feelings she has assigned to her.
It's not a mistake, the way she points out how fraught it is to design machines for someone else.
(Oh, don't be paranoid -- it's just friendly advice.)
She smiles again, though, a little less sharkish this time. "It's nice that you care," she says, and she is happy about that. "You know, I'd almost worried that you resented me... but it must just have been because we kept missing each other. Having people worry about me does make me try a little harder to get back, at the end of the day... ahh, not that I always think things through in the heat of the moment." Yuliana keeps smiling, though it grows a little more self-effaced, as she says: "Maybe I don't need to tell Elya about diving right through that beam and getting roasted for it... I-I mean, the important thing is that Sayaka made sure to retrieve me safely, isn't it?"
... she's probably going to tell her anyway, but she's at least entertaining the idea that she could downplay events to keep her wife from worrying.
"Well... as for you, just because you can doesn't mean you have to," she goes on to assure her, tilting her soda can towards her. "Really -- I'd be happier if you stayed out of a cockpit. It's certainly safer. If you wanted to fight, that would be one thing, but..." She shrugs, taking another sip. "You should go back to school," she says, instead. "You weren't able to take your final exams with that nonsense Britannia pulled, were you? You should get certified now -- you're smart enough. Go to university and study, if you don't want to get an apprenticeship working on machines for people to kill each other with. There's more to engineering than tools of war, as much as it's where I'm comfortable." And of course she's comfortable advising Shari on her life course; she's still her aunt.
<Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
It would be easier, wouldn't it?
"Yeah," Shari says. And she does think she's working with good people--now, anyway. At least some of them are. She doesn't really know all of them yet. ....It's better, though. Regardless, "Yeah," Shari says. "It's... Different, understanding more."
It might not be the same feelings Yuliana thinks she has, but Shari will take what she can get. And--
"Nah," Shari says. "...I don't resent you." There are other verbs she could use, but 'resent' isn't one. She doesn't always think things through... Is Yuliana going to tell Elisa about that? Shari lifts an eyebrow when she suggests she won't. She may be skeptical. "Up to you."
Yuliana actually assures her she doesn't need to, and Shari doesn't even think it's because they could end up on opposite sides. It's safer outside, but...
"Yeah," Shari says. "I missed the finals, I missed U-FITS..." But she has been thinking of getting certified already. And if Yuliana is saying it...
"Yeah," she says. "Maybe I will. I've been thinking about it, anyway. And I've got..." She considers, "Friends, who want to go. So it might be nice to go to school outside Britannian-held areas anyway."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"You'll keep getting more perspective as you get older," Yuliana says, when Shari talks about how much she understands now, and perhaps it is encouraging.
She is relieved, though, to hear that Shari doesn't resent her. Surely all the verbs she could use are positive! Coming to Elisa, she muses: "I just wouldn't want her to think I'm in danger here... though perhaps she'd be more worried if she thought I was being evasive. Yes... it's better to tell her everything. What kind of woman would I be if I kept such a battle from my wife?" Well, it wasn't hard for Yuliana to argue herself back to full disclosure. Perhaps it's safest that Shari didn't weigh in.
(Besides, it's probable -- though not, admittedly, certain -- that Elisa was watching the fight through her own means, and already knows. And if she already knows, she'd be worried if Yuliana didn't tell her...)
She tilts her head, though, when Shari talks about all the things she missed. "That's a shame," she says, with a light frown. "They took a lot of important experiences from you..." Unlike all the experiences the Kafims stole from Shari, making her work on her technology when she could have been studying or going out with friends. That's different, obviously, for self-evident reasons she doesn't have to spell out.
"But it's nice to hear you've friends who are interested," Yuliana smiles, and might not even be painting a target on their backs! Maybe. "You'll succeed more easily if you're not doing it alone. But yes, I rather do think it would be better to avoid Britannia, after all that... you've left both the Areas you used to have to deal with, so I wouldn't advise being too quick to associate with the Empire again."
<Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
Shari has a feeling that she will, at that.
But, Shari figured that was way too fraught for her to want to weigh in on anyway--better to let Yuliana come to her own decision. Elisa probably already knows anyway; Shari knows that as well as she does.
But, "...I guess," Shari allows about taking things. "But I can get some new things." She'd rather think of it that way, than about irreplaceable experiences that she's just stuck without now.
It's her own experiences, instead. Right?
Yuliana might not paint targets, but Shari doesn't plan to name them in any case. "...Yeah," Shari agrees. "And I'm not going back to my parents in any case."
A pause. She remembers how much Elisa hates Britannia...
"Yeah," she says. "No sense in going there if I can help it. I've got better things to do."
"...You feeling any better?" she wonders, sipping at her soda. "It was pretty rough, it seems like."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"New things... what a pleasant way to look at it." Maybe Yuliana could learn something from Shari's perspective...
... but that would mean she'd have to put aside all the bitterness in her heart for how the world has wronged her, flaunting all those things she cannot have. She is too jealous and spiteful a creature.
And so, when Shari says she won't go back to her parents, Yuliana nods firmly. "Good." Did they steal her away from her parents? Hardly so -- they'd have to have wanted her for it to be theft. What kind of parent neglects their child so?
(Even if Shari decides to avoid Britannia to avoid getting swept up in any vengeance the Union might face from Elisa, that still counts as following Yuliana's advice.)
Yuliana smiles, to Shari, when she asks after her state. "I rather am, I think," she says, warmly. "I was rather shaken by that last battle, but... I did come back, after all. And even if that bucket of bolts is impossible... I did manage to convince someone like me to stop fighting for the people who were using her for their own ends." She thinks of the likes of Soma, as she says, "I'm not always able to forgive that type of person... but I am glad Elya's friends haven't asked me to destroy any more facilities like that."
A brief pause, "... not that Elya's mentioned them wanting anything lately..."
Does that mean they haven't asked, or does it just mean Elisa has been declining to lend the efforts of their cell to the latest projects? Don't ask Yuliana; she clearly wouldn't know.
She shakes her head, smiling to Shari. "But never mind that -- you've left that life behind. I'll just say, it was... confronting, being pushed into trying to convince her myself. I don't really think of myself as someone who talks people down... but Leyasha was in a mood, so I couldn't very well have just told her to do it. I think I must have gotten quite animated! But I managed to convince her she was squandering her destructive talents... who knows? Maybe she'll even survive."
She looks away, over the vast hangar, as she adds: "Probably not, though. Experiments with expiry dates don't typically enjoy happy endings. It might be a lot of effort for nothing... but I guess I'd feel worse if I'd killed her then and there."
<Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
Shari is going to work with it, anyway.
"Yeah." Shari's parents might be better role models than Elisa and Yuliana Kafim, from many perspectives. Shari still doesn't plan to go back to them. Or to Britannia.
But, Shari had been wondering, since that's part of why she stuck around to talk in the first place, so she asked, and now... "Hmm. Yeah... That's good," Shari says, of the friends. But she did leave that life. The intel is notable, but what's Shari going to do with it?
Probably nothing.
"I didn't think of myself as a lot of things," Shari admits, "But sometimes you find you can. ...Though uh, I mean... Squandering her talents is one thing to convince her of. I guess that helped?"
But probably not surviving... "...Well," Shari says, "At least there's a chance, right? No chance if you'd killed her right off. So it's better than nothing."
"...Since you're feeling better I should probably get back to my real work. But I'm glad you didn't die, Aunt Yuliana. Keep it up, OK?"
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Or, from another perspective: what could Shari possibly do with that intel?
Their niece can't really hurt them, even if her rocks are dangerous.
"Someone like that wouldn't very well listen to appeals to her good nature," Yuliana observes, quite practically. "You'll find that sometimes you have to meet someone where they are, Sharochka, and not where you want them to be. She wanted to hurt the people who hurt her -- so I just convinced her there were better ways to go about it." She sighs, shaking her head. "... and there is, I suppose, a chance. ... it would be nice."
She nods, to Shari, when she brings up her work. "You're working here, now? I'm glad to hear it. And -- I will," she says, with an honest smile. "I'm grateful to you, plemyannitsa. Be well." After a moment to gather herself, she picks herself up to go report to the medics herself. (She even throws the can in the garbage instead of just leaving it lying around! How thoughtful.)
... of course, she then has to explain to those medics why she's walking around instead of having waited for them, but luckily, most of the medical personnel in the PPL are used to Yuliana being Yuliana by now.