2024-03-12: Those unavoidable sacrifices
- Log: 2024-03-12
- Cast: Liam 7-020, Lilium Valerie
- Where: Tokyo-3, Area 11, Earth
- OOC - IC Date: Sometime in Late November, Universal Century 0098
- Summary: A totally normal and unremarkable soldier delivers some paperwork to Tokyo-3, and is guided to her destination by a fellow pilot.
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
The OCU's secession has made Tokyo-3's situation... complex. NUNE inherited NERV and its apparati from the Federation, and the fortress city is NERV's administrative territory. It is technically a foreign military base on Japanese soil, and accordingly, security around it is extremely tight. To get into the city--whether by rail or road or the heavily-patrolled footpaths--one must first pass through an OCU security cordon. Then, one must pass through one of NERV's cordons. It makes getting in and out a tremendous pain in the ass. And for many of the city's citizens, who were used to an era in which they could travel more freely, it's an uncomfortable new reality.
Liam is one such citizen. He's just made it through a full transit through the checkpoint, where OCU personnel asked him questions, scanned him, scanned his duffel bag, and then asked some more questions. Despite the fact that he's wearing a NERV uniform, the NERV personnel weren't any less detached.
So now, having been scanned several times--and presenting a redacted medical card explaining the anomalies that showed up on the full-body scanner, again--he sits at the end of the conveyor, waiting for his bag to pass through. The service firearm inside has been accounted for. He has a license to carry it. The guards are still noting it as they watch the bag move through.
Nothing is private. It's like being back in the lab.
Of course, to an external viewer, Liam looks like a normal soldier ensnared by a security apparatus for no good reason. He's young--maybe in his early twenties, at the oldest--but big. At six foot five, with a burly, imposing build, he would stand out pretty much everywhere. Age is slowly shaving some of the softness from his face. His eyes are a bright gas-flame blue, and his hair is little more than stubble across his jaw, and beneath his beret.
He lets out a breath as his duffel bag is released, and slowly rolls towards him. He reaches out to pluck it up by the handle.
<Pose Tracker> Lilium Valerie has posed.
One would think, at least from an outsider's perspective, that a member of a cross-bloc military force would have some form of priority in these systems. One would be mistaken. It's important to remember that the Gaia Sabers are the regular forces, or at least they will be--although thinking about it in these terms does little to mitigate Lilium's frustrations.
The OCU personnel, for their part, seem to be somewhat less trusting of her (perhaps understandably so, given what she represents), but after only... a little longer than average, she makes it through to the NERV side of the checkpoint.
"Who's idea was it for us to... who wears a normal suit for their service uniform..." She mumbles as the latest attempt at a uniform for her organisation--this one taking the form of a green-and-black normal suit adorned with a fabric mantle, of all things--causes predictable issues with the body scanner, delaying her to the point that her bag passes through the system before she does.
The guards take note of its contents--largely just paperwork. Evidently standardising and issuing a service weapon isn't too high on her superior's list of priorities.
Lilium herself, to someone not keeping up with current events, would look like anything but the shockingly normal soldier she actually was--Although seemingly in her early 20s herself, and not too tall, being a little under six feet, the obvious eccentricity of her prototype uniform makes her stick out far more than any of her natural features. She's missing any kind of head cover sans a little hairpin, but that can, of course, be chalked up to the state of her services' existence.
Finally making her way through, she follows the conveyor belt down the line in an attempt to locate her satchel.
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
This is an international border, Liam reminds himself. Things are tense. This doesn't make it any less dehumanizing. As his bag inches down the rollers, the redhead glances back at the next person in line. The glance turns into a bit of a stare as he processes the uniform, but mercifully(?), it doesn't seem to be a personal fashion choice. Lilium's bag pops out of the scanner, rolls somewhat faster, and nudges Liam's.
Liam looks, for a moment, at the NERV soldier reading the scanner, picks up Lilium's bag, and hands it to her after he claims his own. "Here," he says, offering a conciliatory smile. "First time through?"
<Pose Tracker> Lilium Valerie has posed.
Lilium's cheeks have been a somewhat faint red... the entire time she's been going through the checkpoint, for obvious reasons, and they're probably going to stay that way until they issue a more reasonable day to day uniform, or she gets used enough to the glorified pilot suit. She sighs, nodding her head. "Yes, first time... well, this side of the world in general. Can't say I've had to go through two borders at once before."
She swings the strap over her shoulder carefully, letting her satchel hang down past her waist. At least she's through now. Annoying... but understandable, given the situation. Hopefully she wouldn't have to be here too long, but ideally she also wouldn't have to go back through the checkpoints too soon, either.
She lets out a faint sigh, looking up at the ceiling.
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
"It's a weird situation," Liam says, with a tilt of the head. His accent is faint, but noticeable--Britannian, but not from the Homeland. Similar to the accents in enclaves of Irish expatriates in AEU England. Just barely there, like a neglected plant in a pot on a back shelf... or new growth, coming in after a forest fire.
"First time coming to Japan?" Liam's smile widens a little. "Yeah, I'll bet." A year ago, he could not have had this conversation with a stranger. Now, he offers Lilium a hand in greeting. "I'm Liam. I'm one of NERV's pilots here. Who do you fly for?" He glances at the flightsuit, but--tactfully--doesn't comment on it. "Is there somewhere you have to be here?"
<Pose Tracker> Lilium Valerie has posed.
"Yes, well..." She mumbles, taking a moment to parse his accent. That was... Irish, wasn't it? Whichever Area the Britannians said that was. Faint, although she can't tell if that's because it's been suppressed or he's learning to unsuppress it."I can't really fault the OCU for... ah... I suppose that's not something I can..." She shakes her head.
Lilium gives a quick nod of her head, reaching out to shake Liam's hand relatively firmly. "Quite. Lilium Valerie. I'm--" She pauses for a moment. "...I suppose I do fly now. Gaia Sabers, or at least for what's going to be the Gaia Sabers."
Shaking her head again, she glances away. "...I just need to take some papers to whatever central NERV administrative office can handle them. Fill out some forms there, have some forms filled out, get some of your bosses and my bosses' formal agreements in actual writing on both of our ends. You know how it is..."
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
Liam nods. The state of martial law in southern Japan--and it is southern Japan in his head, not that degrading 'Area 11' garbage--has to be making the OCU terribly nervous. NERV has done its part to protect Earth, including Japan, but...
But only a few months back, he'd had to justify why he'd diverted to answer a distress call in the OCU over the 'discretion' of the Jeturk rep whose suit he was piloting on a 'demonstration'.
"It's not fun," Liam decides upon. "For anybody." He nods politely as Lilium returns his handshake and introduces herself. His grip is firm and strong, but also controlled. "The Gaia Sabers?" His eyebrows rise. "...New cross-bloc defense force, right? I heard tell about G-Hound being reorganized, and of course Londo Bell's been on its last legs for a while." Lilium gives him some simple but open-ended instructions, and he nods.
"Think I know where you're headed. Want me to take you there?"
<Pose Tracker> Lilium Valerie has posed.
"Yes, something like that... more along the lines of the cross-bloc defense force. G-Hound and Londo Bell were too small to meaningfully contain major threats, and their autonomous nature lead to... issues." She frowns for a moment, before shaking her head once again. "With actual NUNE oversight, hopefully those issues are mitigated some... and ideally concentrating the bloc's military powers outside of their direct command will prevent them from, ah... causing problems for each other."
As Liam nods to her, she glances down at her watch, and then back up at him--"It'd save me the trouble of finding it myself. If it's not too much trouble, I'd be obliged."
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
Liam nods. He wonders what Lilium means by 'issues'. G-Hound's overreach, and 'whoops, we were harboring a horrific child soldier lab the entire time?' Part of Londo Bell breaking out in open rebellion against Federation tyranny? Both?
He tries to dismiss the thought with a shake of his head. It doesn't quite work. Liam's commanding officer is, ultimately, Gendo Ikari, a man who has proven himself willing to do monstrous things in the name of the greater good. (His greater good?)
"This way," Liam says. The door slides open before him, depositing the two of them on a perfectly normal Tokyo-3 road: suspiciously wide for a city without a ton of car traffic, but more sensible as a place where Evas can fight without constantly crushing infrastructure underfoot. Beyond that lies the central 'hub' of Tokyo-3, the clusters of skyscrapers with offices and industry in them. "I think you're headed to NERV Administrative Secondary," Liam says. He sets off at a steady pace.
He pauses a beat, once again pushing past his hesitence to talk. It's getting easier with practice and therapy, but... "So what have you heard about NERV?"
<Pose Tracker> Lilium Valerie has posed.
Lilium, for her part, doesn't think too hard about her statement. Maybe she should think about it harder, but she has more immediate concerns.
She glances about at the oddly-wide road--The skyscrapers that all seem to be just slightly smaller than the blocks of road that contain them, the just slightly hollow sound of her own footsteps--following along after him. "Yes, secondary sounds... about right... is that far?" She asks.
Lilium takes a note of his hesitance to speak... but doesn't really think much of it. His business is his business. "The standard. Federal anti-alien and/or Kaiju-class creature (Are we supposed to be calling those S-classes now? I forget...) defense force. Might be about to lose a sizable chunk of its personnel to an OCU breakaway, if you believe the pundits. One of the few earthian military organisations under NUNE not to be slated for Gaia Sabers integration, and the largest of them by far."
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
Liam has run errands to NERV Administrative Secondary dozens of times, and he still takes a moment to triangulate himself. "About a block," he says, and he points up to a rectangular skyscraper clad on both north and south sides with blue-tinted reflective windows. "So not far."
"Kaiju is fine," Liam says. He can't help but frown as Lilium says something that, however unintentionally, digs into his skin. "That's... why I don't listen to pundits," he says, and he sounds stung. "Sorry. I--didn't mean anything by it. Just, I've met a lot of good people here, and they've all given a lot to be sure we have a world to live in. That's how bad this is."
"So I guess whil we're on the subject... what do you know about kaiju? And Angels?"
<Pose Tracker> Lilium Valerie has posed.
Following Liam's gesture, Lilium takes in the building in question. About as rectangular as any other building in Tokyo-3, and seemingly with windows on only two sides. Odd. "Well, blocks here seem large..."
"Right. Kaiju still works..." Her expression shifts slightly, and she gives a grim nod. "Entirely reasonable, don't worry. Takes the right kind of person to do this kind of work, fighting a war's one thing when it's against humans..."
She thinks for a moment. "Kaiju? Any lifeform over a given size. The designation is typically applied to the ones that don't try to talk to us. High threat level. Need specialist organisations like NERV to deal with." She stops to think for a moment. Angels... angels... what's an Angel, again..?
"Angels are... that, but more so. A specific series of them, defined by traits that... I think are classified. Typically more dangerous. One of them might've been involved in stopping the last colony drop attempt, supposedly, but I'm not sure if that's hearsay or not."
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
"That's how the city's laid out, yeah," Liam says, with a nod. The passers-by on the sidewalk seem mostly in line with the types one might encounter in the other Tokyos. Businesspeople out on their lunch break, an automated sweeper cleaning trash and dirt out of the gutter. Across the street--on a smaller building that looks a bit more vintage, like an apartment--an older woman is setting bedding out to air on a line on the balcony. There's more military personnel about, of course, but you could almost forget this place is a fortress as well as a city.
Almost.
"Yeah," Liam says, with an affirmative smile. "We have an org devoted to identifying and classifying kaiju, and analyzing their behavior. They're called STORAGE." One professional kaiju scientist, two pilots, one commander who may in fact be an ancient alien, and one extremely charismatic giant robot. "Not all kaiju are a threat. Some of them you can just lure away from populated areas, like animal predators... just much bigger. It's the ones that you can't--or the ones that get deployed deliberately, as weapons--that we have to fight."
Colony drop attempt. Axis? Secondhand knowledge of Duma, or Sahaquiel? Liam's breath comes a little quicker, for how casually Lilium mentions it, but he takes a deep breath and makes himself refocus.
"Angels are the... I'd call them the worst but most of what makes them so awful is they... have their own rules." Liam turns to Lilium, adjusts his duffel bag strap, and cups his hands together. "They've got something called an A.T. Field. You can shoot them with reflex warheads, capital ship weaponry--and it won't hurt them. You have to get through the field, first, and the only things that can do that are the Eva Units." Liam points at another seemingly-ordinary skyscraper on the skyline. This one... has some sort of facade, on one side. Is it built to slide down and away from the rest of the building? For what? "They deploy out of catapults like that one, if the Angel's close enough to the city."
<Pose Tracker> Lilium Valerie has posed.
"Well, I suppose that's planned cities for you..." She replies, observing the general goings-on. Really, it's no different from the average city with a military base near it, aside from the... unusual urban planning. Really, the uniformed NERV personnel didn't even stand out that much...
She nods along to Liam's kaiju explanation. "Right, there's the non-threat ones that don't communicate, obviously... I forget, is the definition anything too big for a Zentradi to handle as if it were a normal animal? I feel like the line would be more definite than that..." She trails off for a moment, before turning back to him. "-Right, the actual bioweapons... that'd be the thing we'd need to liase with you the most on, I imagine..."
She notices his sudden intake of breath--but brushes it off. After all, that wasn't something she wasn't supposed to know, was it..? That woman from cathedra had mentioned it so casually, she'd assumed it was public information... not that she'd looked into it.
"...Right. That kind of problem." She sighs, shaking her head. "Right, right... Conventional weapons don't work, and attempts to make any unconventional weapon that works outside of your organisation's proprietary Evangelion standard have been less than successful, correct?" She glances up the side of the building. That... that was definitely a moving panel. Was it some form of advanced blinds for the entire building's windows, or--oh. Oh.
"..ah. I'd heard NERV's mobile weapons were... bigger than average, but that's... I suppose if you need something that big..." A thought occurs to her. "...What happens if they're not close enough? Do you need to have the pilots walk their units the rest of the way, or..?"
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
"You know, that's a good question," Liam says, on the definition of a kaiju. He's heard that the Frontier fleet breeds Zentradi-sized livestock. Are there other animals in that size band? Thinking back to the kaiju he's fought, he's pretty sure all but the most reckless of Zentradi would want an armored pod between them and the enemy.
Qivi, Liam thinks, and his heart sinks a little at the memory. When he snaps back into reality, his gaze darts towards Lilium a little too quickly, like he's reassuring himself she's still there. "Yeah, that's our job. We had a couple high-profile science criminals using them as terror weapons and distractions." One of those criminals is now reformed, receiving proper care, and a freshman in college! "Angels... don't seem to fit that pattern, but there's been a couple anomalous cases. They're their own beast."
"You get it. The only thing that can neutralize an A.T. Field is another A.T. Field, and the Evas are the only things we field--" He narrowly avoids using the word 'machine'. Perhaps it's noticeable. It was either that, or lie. He can't think of them as machines anymore, after he watched Eva-01 rip into Eva-03 with bestial hunger. Machines don't bleed. Machines don't leave lakes of blood and gore in the Japanese countryside. Machines don't have teeth like that.
"With those." Thankfully, Lilium noticing the militarized architecture is a very good distraction! "Some other buildings are defensive platforms. A bunch of others slide down and deploy Eva-sized firearms. It's all very... sophisticated."
How are these monstrosities deployed? Good question! "NERV has ways to field them. They can fit on your average MS carrier if they crouch, usually, and in space they can hitch a ride on a capital ship. But mostly... it's about detecting the Angel, and moving to meet it."
Unlike that time they didn't until it was on top of them. On top of the test unit. Inside, with Asuka.
<Pose Tracker> Lilium Valerie has posed.
Lilium thinks for a moment. "Probably something that's more the record-keeper's problem than ours." She decides.
She tilts her head slightly to one side at the rapid turn of Liam's head, before brushing it off. People working this sort of post were probably going to have their share of uncomfortable memories. No sense prying into them. "Oh, I remember hearing parts of that over the news during the ZAFT war... didn't feel real from a Wanzer cockpit in a trench in Flanders, but from here... from here it's more believable." She says, eyes fixed on the comically large deployment gate. "Well, I imagine an artificially-created Angel wouldn't be too easy to differentiate from the others... Things that defy classification but share one common trait would be hard to pin down, I suppose."
She doesn't react to that pointed avoidance--though Lilium notices that 'thing' is hardly conventional vernacular for this sort of unit, and while 'weapon' would be the most obvious answer Liam's choice to go straight to the non-specific indicates he's covering something, she assumes this is for the normal reasons. Classified specifications. It's fairly well-documented (insomuch as anything about NERV is documented) that the Evangelion platform isn't entirely mechanical, after all. Wouldn't do to pry into an autonomous organisation's classified information, especially not as a junior officer.
"Ah.. Well, if you can't fit the equipment in the catapults with them... aside from fixed weapons, assuming they have anything in the way of that..." She stops. "What about the buildings that... aren't part of the Evangelion infrastructure? I can't imagine that's all of them... don't they get in the way?"
Lilium does some math in her head, trying to figure out the rough size of an Eva unit from the massive door, and just how tightly it would have to ball itself up to fit into an MS carrier. They could crouch on top of a Base Jabber or a derivative, presumably... "Right, and that's all done from... well, for this Bloc it's done from here. You have... what, a couple of units here, a couple in Britannia, a couple... wherever it is in the AEU you have your base there..."
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
"Oh," Liam says, "not Angels. Just--kaiju in general. There's apparently ways to just whistle one up, though that bunch had their own method of making them." He's thinking of Alexis Kerib, here, but a moment later he realizes he might be spilling Akane's dirty laundry, too.
"The buildings retract." Realizing that it sounds ridiculous on its face, he gestures to the side of one of the smaller apartment buildings. "They pull down into the ground, and get covered by a layer of armor. There's also shelters inside, to keep people safe. It's... kind of scary, the first time it happens, but I've never had to shelter during an actual emergency. Always been in the field. But it's just like an air raid drill, or an emergency drill. People know where to go."
They know where to go here, Liam thinks, as he feels his thoughts creeping towards a dangerous memory.
"Yeah. NERV... Paris, I think? I know GGG's got branches in France and Germany."
<Pose Tracker> Lilium Valerie has posed.
Lilium blinks--and rearranges some words Liam had said that she'd gotten backwards in her head. "Ah- right. Well, there's all sorts of things... can't be too surprised about that..." She says, brushing the statement off to avoid having to think about it too hard.
"-The buildings--" She starts, before glancing about. Everything that wasn't visibly part of the defense architecture had a good couple of meters of clearance from the road. Each one of those buildings was a regular rectangular shape. Two sides lacked windows, and instead had solid sides with... oh, those were absolutely grooves for machinery.
"...Huh. I guess you do have... what's the term again, a Geofront under here? Makes use of the space. As long as people keep up to date on their emergency procedures, they're fine. Same as anything else." She says, although she subtly shifts about a meter towards the road and away from the nearest building. Don't want to get too close to moving parts if you can help it.
"Paris would make sense. Paris or Berlin. Nice and central."
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
They're almost at the admin building, but Liam stops for a moment to let Lilium look around. Having lived in Tokyo-3 for... three years, now? It's easy for him to take the infrastructure for granted. Emergency drills happen. The buildings retract, and emerge when the sun rises. People go about their daily lives--they work, go to school, make dinner, water the plants, take care of pets and children.
"Yeah," Liam says, a little distantly. "The people here are safe." But is he? He's not as sure about it as he used to be. "Or as safe as anywhere can be." Rei and Asuka weren't safe here. Shinji sure didn't feel safe. The only two pilots on the active roster are Mari and Kaworu, and each of them have their own... unique relationship with the concept of personal safety.
Kids. That's what he's been stepping around this whole time, Liam realizes. There's kids in those things. Does Lilium know? "Yeah. Anyway, here we are," Liam says, showing Lilium to the sliding doors of the admin building. NERV's logo is lacquered in bright red on the plaza outside:
Half of a fig leaf, draped over the word 'NERV'. A quote: "God's in His heaven, all's right with the world."
"Travel safe," says Liam, managing a smile. "I hope we run into each other again."
<Pose Tracker> Lilium Valerie has posed.
Lilium, after taking her moment to look around, follows on after him. It's a normal city, really. Just one that's designed to contend with a particularly unique form of natural disaster. People go on with their lives in the shadows of giants--just like the earth sphere as a whole. Everything is fine, even when things go wrong.
"That's all we can ask for, really." She says, examining his facial expression a little closer than before."The civilians are, at least. I can't imagine the active duty personnel are safe, exactly, but... that's the sacrifice we have to make, right?" She says, obliviously.
She wonders, for a moment, what kind of person NERV headhunts to operate something that big. Veterans, probably... They're presumably manual-types, some distant descendant of the school of thought that gave the world Mazinger Z. Most things that big are. You'd need someone of a certain age to have the experience for that... maybe to train younger pilots in the older control schemes. Her gaze falls upon the logo--All's right with the world.
Hopefully that holds true, at least from now on.
"I'll try my best to. You keep safe too, alright?" she replies, returning a weak smile of her own. "I'll see you around, I hope. Preferably not in the context of something going wrong."
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
"Yeah," Liam says, and he can't ignore the rising bitterness in his mouth. "That's the sacrifice we have to make." The big man nods, turns on a heel with military crispness--
A crispness drilled into him by a man who first learned it in the EFF, then the Titans--
And walks back towards the bus station. It's just a short ride from there to his apartment. Lucine's probably there already.