2024-06-12: Ultra Warrior Alive And Well
- Cast: Qivi, Sousuke Sagara
- Where: Team Crossbow Hangar, Huffman Island
- Date: U.C. 0099 06 12
- Summary: Qivi, recently returned to Earth, comes to Huffman hoping to find her old garage is by some miracle intact.
It has instead been colonized by Sousuke Sagara. Opinions on if this is better than the alternatives are mixed.
<Pose Tracker> Sousuke Sagara has posed.
Some months ago, Sousuke Sagara and Kaname Chidori came to Huffman Island in pursuit of work, safety, and revenge, in approximately that order. One reason is it was simply safer than Sousuke trying to get mercenary work that could've easily ended up with them needing to go to the Colonies or Khanka or the Impact Wars burn zones; he was an accomplished AS pilot, more than capable of holding his own in the arena. Another was that Qivi had very generously left her garage as a Shuffle-affiliated supply station, and with her presumed dead and the greater Shuffle Alliance disbanded, Sousuke Sagara felt very little compunction about raiding what remained for his own use.
Which is why a bunch of that gear, most notably the pile bunker, has been moved to the hangar in use by the recently-expanded and recently QUITE successful Team Crossbow. The RK-91 has been cleaned up from its old dull camo paint job into the bright white and navy that a Shuffle veteran would know was the colors of the Arbalest.
At the moment it's in maintenance position, held up by chains in a slight slump so armor can be pried free, but most of the mechanics are on the other side of the garage. *Sousuke* is at a workbench with one of the arm segments, checking over the muscle packages, dressed down in an undershirt and loose slacks, as fits the area.
<Pose Tracker> Qivi has posed.
And only one month ago, Qivi came... well, back to Earth, after being lost and presumed dead on Jupiter. She actually returned to Huffman Island, though she immediately left again; she's spent most of her time since in space (specifically, Orbit Base) or a few other places that, sadly, were not here.
She has no hopes that Sarangay still exists. She expects it was sold long ago, because she hardly paid up to use this garage for a year and a half ahead of time. But she has to check. She built that machine herself, mostly; it's hard to believe that it is gone.
Qivi didn't own the garage. The actual owner was a Britannian who moved to the OCU side of Huffman a good 30 years ago, just before the second Huffman conflict. He's mostly retired now, but he supports what he thought were anti-Britannian rebel units (he didn't know all the Shuffle details, for his own safety) and there were passcodes Sousuke could use, and electronic locks he could open.
But Qivi still has codes too. Her codes, rather than the ones provided to the Shuffle; even if Sousuke changed the ones he knew about, there was still one lock-code that he wouldn't have.
One of the small doors in the hangar opens; it's a fire escape door and isn't supposed to open from the outside, but, well... The fire alarm doesn't go off when it's opened that way, but it does give one loud *beep*, an error that Qivi considered an alert worth keeping and so never fixed. It probably gets Sousuke's attention.
Especially when a purple-haired woman ducks in through the door. Qivi's hair is longer than it used to be, but she otherwise looks pretty much the same: jeans and a tank top, today. She blinks in the change of light, letting her eyes adapt from a sunny day as she closes the door behind her, and -
"Son of a *bitch*," she says to herself, seeing the silhouette of an Arm Slave. It just looks *wrong* there to her. That's her spot!
<Pose Tracker> Sousuke Sagara has posed.
The beep gets Sousuke's attention, alright, though one might say he's off his game considering it neither is armed to drop a net nor does he draw his gun when an unplanned noise shows up from a suspicious quarter.
(It WAS armed with a net but Nami got mad at him when it went off on her by accident. Daily life with Sousuke.)
But he does blink as he spots Qivi swearing to herself. "Ah," he says, passively, and motions an all-clear to a redheaded girl across the way who's leaning over to look from a computer desk.
People coming back from the dead - or rather, surviving things they were presumed not to have - is old hat for a man like Sousuke, so he doesn't look very shocked. If anything he looks calm and welcoming, itself unusual for him. "Qivi," he says. "You survived, then." To the point as ever.
<Pose Tracker> Qivi has posed.
Qivi wasn't present for the fall of the Island, either, and wasn't aware Sousuke was alive. But she also didn't know he was thought to be dead. She hadn't been able to contact any Shuffles at *all* through old channels since her return; she only had information from the few she knew how to get in contact with in other ways.
Her expression brightens immediately. "Sousuke! SOUSUKE! And so did you," Qivi says, raising one arm as if going to give him a comradely thump on the back but reconsidering at the last moment and shoving her hand in her pocket, awkwardly. There's relief in her voice, anyway. "Glad to hear it. I've been kinda out of touch for a while, I don't know how many people are still alive. I got back and nobody's picking up any of the old drops - well, that's fine, I wouldn't expect everything to be the same, but I figured I could get ahold of SOMEONE!"
She looks over at the Arm Slave. "That yours?" she asks, because she can't think of who else's it would be. She has to ask, though she's a little anxious and it shows in her posture: "Did you have to move Sarangay out to make room?"
Sarangay was probably gone before Sousuke got there, she realizes.
<Pose Tracker> Sousuke Sagara has posed.
His eyes flit to her hand, but he nods quietly at her relief a moment later. "I don't either," he admits. "Amalgam struck in force. They destroyed Merida Island, damaged or exposed most of the other Shuffle strongholds, and tried to assassinate me directly, so we've been on the run ever since. As near as I can tell, shortly after the attacks, Doctor Mass decided to terminate the alliance network. The codes still worked here, though, so..." He motions, vaguely, to the surroundings. "We did what worked, I suppose."
He straightens as she looks to Crossbow. "No," he says. "Its name is Crossbow. I'm the pilot, but the owner is Nami." He motions in the direction of the redhead. Maybe Thai? Not particularly easy to tell, though she does look up as she's spoken about. OCU, anyway. "I gather she recovered it at some point and ended up bringing it here in the hopes she could either sell it or use it. ...The paint job and name were my idea, though, yes."
"Only AFTER I shot down 'Al 2!'" Nami shoots back from across the room.
Sousuke grimaces and looks aside. "...Arbalest was shot down," he affirms for Qivi. "Al was lost with it."
On the same topic of lost friends... "I'm afraid it was gone by the time I arrived on the island," Sousuke confirms. "It was mostly a fluke that let us settle down in the garage. The extra armament space has been beneficial, compared to our old space."
<Pose Tracker> Qivi has posed.
Qivi did remember that Sousuke probably does not appreciate being touched. And she's kind of touchy, so it's probably a good thing that she remembered!
"Aw, shit, that's why I can't get ahold of anyone." Qivi slumps slightly. "I heard shit went down, but I didn't know the details. You guys okay out here? You need anything?" 'We've' been on the run implies multiple people. Was Nami one of them? Qivi can't remember; when she looks over at the woman, she doesn't recognize her, and she's reasonably but not entirely sure she would have remembered seeing her. She smiles slightly anyway when Nami looks up at them.
"..." Qivi is not really aware of Al as an AI, but it sounds like a person name to her, so... "I'm sorry to hear that," she says. "Well, I'm glad you're getting some use out of the garage. I rented the spot, but that's long since ended. I wasn't expecting to be gone for, what, fourteen months? It took me this long to get back from Jupiter."
She looks over toward where Crossbow is under construction, thoughtfully, then: "Hey. Hey! Is that a Last Stake?" She starts to go over, without asking, toward the armaments laid out for Crossbow: "That is! That's *my* damn Last Stake, I can see the changes to the pneumatic pusher I put on it!"
<Pose Tracker> Sousuke Sagara has posed.
"For now, we're fine. This has been..." Sousuke gets a strange look on his face, like he himself is not sure what he's thinking. "...comfortable," he settles on, like he's not sure it's a good thing. "We're doing well in the arena, which has let us source better parts and facilities, so...for now, we're making due. It's better than when we were living in a van, anyway." ... "We met Nami here. I'm traveling with Kaname."
Qivi may or may not remember Heart-4, who through raw accident of the compounding conflicts of interest that would eventually contribute to the Alliance's fall, ended up more or less in charge of the Greater Alliance for a few months. She wasn't there at least when Qivi and Sousuke knew each other best, during the time locked away in Tsutsujidai.
"I imagine. I know how difficult it can be to arrange travel from remote locales." He's rather underestimating the matter - but then again, he's mostly been a terrestrial soldier. He considers it a complicated task, not the 'nearly impossible feat' it actually was. "...it's good to see you, anyway," he says, showing he's improved at least a little.
But then...she sees the prize!! "It is, yes," Sousuke confirms. "Considering your status, we thought you might not miss it." Something that can t least pass as a joke. "We're competing in more variety of events, and Crossbow's arms aren't as durable as Sarangay's, so we've had to make some modifications."
<Pose Tracker> Qivi has posed.
Qivi does not stop until she gets to the Last Stake, the pile bunker she was fond of as a melee weapon when she wasn't using the heavy knuckles she made her name with. She's absolutely sure it's hers, even if it's been repainted and modified a little; she made some changes to the propulsion unit and she can see them.
She rests her hand on it for a moment before turning away from it. "Glad something of it survived, anyway," she says, her voice more carefully controlled. It's not hers anymore. Sousuke's been using it, and without Sarangay...
Qivi vaguely remembers Kaname, but not as a leader - that was while she was 'dead', and extremely out of touch. But she does know that for at least a while Sousuke was keeping an eye on her, even if she knows no details, so:
"It's good to see you again too. And... yeah, I bet. I ran through the arena myself, obviously, with Sarangay. And I lived out of a truck for a while, so I get it. Just me, though. Didn't have to watch over anyone else." Qivi shoves her hands back in her pockets, awkwardly.
"I do miss it," she admits. "I miss Sarangay. But I'm sure that was sold for parts - it was a pretty tuned-up Blizzaia, deep down." She doesn't blame Sousuke; she's sure he had nothing to do with it. "My old apartment got cleaned out too. Nothing left there."
It's hard for her to say it, but she may as well admit what she's known for the last few weeks: she's never going to have Sarangay again. She might build something new - *might* - but it won't be the same. Even if she'll always be Sarangay to her fans. "...you may as well keep it, though. I don't think I need it anymore. And if you're going through the arena, you'll need to work with gear you know."