2024-08-06: Kamogawa's Deculture Spirit
- Log: 2024-08-06: Kamogawa's Deculture Spirit
- Cast: Madoka Kyouno, Milly Ashford
- Where: Kamogawa, Japan
- OOC - IC Date: 6 Aug UC0099
- Summary: With summer in full swing, a girl reaches out through the transient barrier between school and adulthood, snagging at threads left frayed for two years. Sometimes, all it takes is one stubborn push.
<Pose Tracker> Madoka Kyouno has posed.
The call comes in with zero fanfare. Not even the decency to be 'hip' with the crowd and send a text like everyone does nowadays, but a straight-up phonecall during the twilight hours of Kamogawa. Whether put to voicemail or picked up: "Ah, it connected. Hello? Hello hello? This should be Milly Ashford. I'm calling from Kamogawa High School, about GUTS in general, but mostly about the Deculture Festival that's supposed to be happening around this timeframe. If you could get back to me with how you pulled it off, it'd be appreciated. Oh, I got this number from one of the teachers who managed to cross the border after Ashford shut down, so if I am wrong about the number if you know where she is, just come by Kamogawa sometime and ask for the Jersey Cl-" END OF MESSAGE.
She didn't even notice the voicemail time limit exceeding.
---
There she was in the Jersey Club room, a few papers laid out as she sorted out her own handwritten notes. Orange jersey, orange pants, flicking through the stash. GUTS, the establishment of such under the cherry blossoms, the way it spread, the multiple layers of brokered agreements (penciled in shorthand and only what was necessary in her head), and the few bits and pieces of official pamphlets and other printouts about what one could do with GUTS.
And in the middle, the last two years of the Deculture Festival, victories and the snapshots of life captured in pictures.
"Wonder if this is going to hold up if no one's keeping an eye on it..." Inertia was a powerful push...but it was just that. Momentum.
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
Summer has been a welcome opportunity for Milly to decompress a little, even if her life is continuously getting stranger; it's the sort of strange that she's okay with, for the moment, though. It's a huge surprise, though, to have a call come for her from a GUTS student. ... It is flattering, though, to be remembered -- she'd hoped that the organization would outlive her time in high school, and sure enough, it does.
... she also really wants an excuse to travel again, so here she is, on a linear train trip to Japan. It's... different, with the OCU and the rest of the former Federation blocs no longer having essentially unlimited free passage. She's not sure she likes it.
Still... she's here, knocking at the room to the Jersey Club door. The atmosphere of a Japanese school in summer... it's nice, and she'd missed it a bit. "Hello? This is Milly Ashford. I thought I'd stop by in person and answer your questions," she says, through the door.
<Pose Tracker> Madoka Kyouno has posed.
There's a bit of shuffling through the door. The light jerk of papers in shock, before- "Yeeeees. Give me a moment." Another bit of shuffling, another bit, and another, and another. The door slides open, a face of minor curiosity tempering the excitement of obtaining an answer so swiftly. The brunette casting her eyes upward, holding a photo of the coronation of GUTS, checking back and forth...
"Oh wow, it really does check out." Her visual verification check passed, she can't help but blossom into a bright smile. "I was hoping for an answer within a week, but that's a former student council president for you! Kyouno Madoka, head of the Jersey Club." The room itself is more cramped than anything, continually referred to as a 'commandeered room' rather than any sort of official club room. Even the sign bolted above the door didn't have any signifiant mark on it, the insides filled with bookshelves and a few assorted pieces of decorations.
Large enough for a table, seats, and multiple people to fit in!
"I don't have anything for a drink after you came however far, but I do appreciate you coming out of your way." Heading back to the pile of documents, sorting through them. "But for my first question."
"...Was there anything planned for this year's Deculture Festival?"
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
... Milly isn't so much of an adult that she can avoid being pleased at the reception. Her own lips also curl upward when Madoka affirms, 'it really does check out.' It's nice to see new schools involved in the GUTS project, too; for a long while, Milly was worried that it'd fizzle out as travel got harder, but... maybe the world needed these kinds of cross-bloc partnerships.
It's a chance to build bigger partnerships later on, after all.
Milly takes a look around the club room, wondering for a minute if she hasn't walked into something strange -- but every school's a little different, so she doesn't comment on it. The Fantasy Seduction Club was like this too, after all.
Madoka moves to take a seat, and gets a question. "It's nice to meet you," Milly starts, but after a moment she has to think about the actual question. "... Not that I know of? Most of the people I had a close working relationship either graduated or fell off the face of the Earth. If you're looking for ideas, though, I don't mind helping out... Do you have a budget?"
<Pose Tracker> Madoka Kyouno has posed.
Flicking through a few papers, it takes a bit for the proper budgetary piece of paper to be pulled out. Casting a glance every so often to doublecheck the emotional tenor of the situation, there's a few more papers pulled: Budget, budget, rejection, rejection, rejection...
"It doesn't sound like there was much of one last year, but I heard the teachers talking about the ones that happened two and three years ago. Thanks to-" She spins a finger upwards. "-NUNE's establishment and all, everyone's been securing the new textbooks and all that, and with the OCU too..." Trailing off with a sigh. "The hardening of the border here barely helped, too. Everyone's a bit jumpy whenever Britannia gets mentioned." For good reason: A city so relatively close to the border tends to get some of the more unscrupulous elements about.
But, she finds the actual paper. "Seeing that most of GUTS is working on their own shoreups, this is how much we have." The full budgeting sheet: It's not glamorous.
Compared to the spectacles of previous times, even scrounging half as much was a miracle in of itself.
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
Last year... that was a messy time. No one really knew exactly to what extent NUNE's establishment would affect things on this scale; planning for large events like those GUTS runs really would have been just about impossible. Milly regrets, a little bit, not checking up more, but... well, her first year out of high school was ultimately much more about getting her own adult life going after spending an extra year in her adolescence.
"Well, this'll probably be the hardest year for it. If you can get things going again after this, I bet it'll last for a long time," Milly remarks, first. She then takes the budget sheet -- actual paper; how quaint, but Milly loves quaint -- and takes a look. "Eesh. And travel's more expensive, too..." She has to chew on that a bit.
"I think your best bet is to try running something with everything but equestrian and piloting events," Milly answers, almost immediately. "Those are the two biggest expenses -- and without Ashford Academy in the mix, it's probably not going to be something in demand. That was more than half of our budget, so you should be able to balance the books that way even if you go a little overboard with the pageant."
Looking around the messy room a little more, Milly asks, "So how'd your club end up this school's GUTS touchpoint? Is the student council here just kind of lazy?" she asks, curious about who now has the keys to her legacy.
<Pose Tracker> Madoka Kyouno has posed.
"No horses or piloting." A flip open of her own handbook, scribbling quickly. "We agree on that point." No one wanted to be reminded of the current political climate, and horses...Uh. Milly was right. Who wanted horses in their schools? SHe wasn't Lan wouldn't, Mugi...Maybe. "...I think we can take horses off permanently...?" There's a faint thought in the back of her head: The recollection of a horse...in the Gundam Fight? "Unless they want to fight a piloting horse?" Quizzical in nature.
She still makes two X's on the preliminary next budget sheet. Having a pencil in her hand feels nice.
"Eh? Oh, no, the Student Council has the reins on that, still. I'm just helping out after the president asked me to look into finances. A teacher complained to her about it." Leaving out the fact that she was directed by Madoka to do so, especially after coming upon her drunk while heading home...Ahem.
"So I just decided to see what I could do about it after she asked me as a favor, and then I followed up on GUTS's other contacts, found a teacher in...I think it was a private school in the REA? Moved there after Ashford shut down, and they had some of their old paperwork, checked through that trail to find a yearbook, found someone in the class, then found your number." It took a while. A long while.
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
"... Honestly, you probably could. I don't know what the environment is like now, but when I was running things Ashford was actually the only school with an equestrian club," Milly says, with a light laugh under her breath. She doesn't comment on the idea of a piloting horse.
The explanation of how she got found makes her eyes widen a little, though. "You went to all that trouble? Now I'm even happier I showed up." It is a surprise to hear that a teacher from Ashford decided to hoof it to the REA -- though she can think of a few potential candidates, actually.
She takes a closer look at the budget, tapping her cheek a little. "Hmmm. This expense isn't necessary either -- we had to buy all that new, but Jindai should still have it. Tsutsujidai definitely has it, assuming they didn't sell it off, too," Milly offers.
... Curiosity gets the better of her before too long. "While I peek through this, why don't you tell me a little about yourself?" Milly... really is curious just who's inherited her dream.
<Pose Tracker> Madoka Kyouno has posed.
"It sounds like a scandal, doesn't it? The one who pushed GUTS forward disappearing with no information, leaving just the framework for it to work out only for it to come into trouble the first year without anything." Mildly overstating it. "Then again, no one could've predicted NUNE..."
The thought of who would be the teacher to make that voyage was a stillbirth. She found them, and that was the thing that mattered: Even if she still had their contact information.
"Jindai, Tsutsujidai...I remember a teacher saying that Nouvelle Tokyo's schools had a recent backup of some of these things too...And this one, Tokyo-3 Municipal needed to dispose of a few extra ones that came in recently...Oh, and Mihoshi Academy might supply a few, too? Are the Macross ships included in the agreement?" They should be...Maybe. She never checked!
Another few mutters before the question brings her out of that mental railroad, blinking for a moment. "Me? I'm just a girl." A gaze is casted towards the rest of the room. "Onee-chan made this club, so in a way, I'm carrying her own legacy on. Just as she maade this club to make people smile, I want to do the same to others." That bright expression slipped into something a bit more somber, fingers tapping the table. "I grew up here, you know. In Kamogawa. All my life. After some...circumstances, I ended up being cared for by my cousin and my uncle." The intonation doesn't betray any lingering grief. "So I'm continuing this club and helping everyone I can." ...A soft giggle.
"Sorry about that sudden turn. I don't want to let a good thing fall apart with no one watching, you know?"
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
"It does sound like a scandal," Milly agrees, with a little smirk. "Then again, sometimes a scandal's what you need to get people to really appreciate something. Maybe that's why everything's a scandal when it comes to the Britannian nobility, come to think..."
... She puts that thought out of her head, though. She's not really part of that world anymore -- and that's one of the things she's happiest about, even if dealing with how she got out of that situation is now very much her problem. "The Macross ships are included in the GUTS agreement, or at least the Frontier Fleet was when I was still running the show," Milly answers, after only a few moments' thought.
The mention of legacy -- of carrying on your family's efforts... it suddenly makes a lot of sense to Milly that it'd be Madoka who was pursuing GUTS, too. "Well, I think you're doing a great job. You seem pretty engaged in your life, which is the first big step," Milly enthuses.
That last part... she nods. "I can definitely appreciate that. Thanks for taking the time to care about this sort of thing. I was worried about how it'd go without me pushing it along, but it seems like it's in good hands."
<Pose Tracker> Madoka Kyouno has posed.
"An intentional scandal?" Voicing the obvious conclusion, frowning as she ran it over in her head. Maybe. No. No, not really. She can't imagine something like 'subterfuge' being in her vocabulary.
"Then we can see about some of the more technically-sided things from them. Even if Sheryl's mostly out of commission, it shouldn't be that hard to check it through other ways..." Ah, the gears were turning in her head again. Maybe she should just call up the Academy directly and sidestep everything...
"It's a life I want to make worth living. There's been a few people who've had to hammer that in my head." And yet, that smile beams with no regrets in the current moment. She's certainly shining.
"I don't think it'll be supported in perpetuity, considering the general climate...But I'll do my best to try. Just because people move on, they shouldn't lose the connections here, right?" A raised eyebrow. "...Did you lose track of everyone after your graduation?"
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
Milly... hasn't been reading the news lately. It used to be her thing, but she's been so busy getting her other plans off the ground that she's legitimately surprised to hear 'Sheryl's mostly out of commission;' she blinks a few times in obvious concern. "... That is really bad news," she murmurs, softly. "I'd just call the academy and ask to be forwarded to the Student Council office. Remember to make sure the time of day is decent, though..."
She takes another look at those papers. 'A life worth living,' huh... that's a heavy topic -- but she can see, through implication at least, why Madoka would be so concerned with it.
As she's thinking it over a bit, Milly gets hit with an unexpected question... and one that leads her lips to turn down just a bit. "... Mostly, yes. Though it had less to do with graduation and more to do with the martial law period... no one else at Ashford went to the Orbital Ring for postsecondary education," as a teaching student the technical term pops out occasionally even when she's just chatting, "so I've had a hard time staying connected. I do chat with a couple of the other Student Council members sometimes, though!"
With a slightly strained smile, she adds, "... I admit I get the feeling that's not what you wanted to hear -- but that just makes it more important to enjoy high school, right? It may seem like a mixed bag sometimes now, but you'll miss it sooner than you think."
<Pose Tracker> Madoka Kyouno has posed.
Academy. Make sure of the time. There's a self-assured nod at that, barely succeeding at keeping the smile on her face. She's going to make a few other people surprised today, at this rate.
The papers lay still. They bear the marks of people who've worked for one reason or another, shifting about in their lives. It's not the papers themselves that have significance, but the reason they're together.
The second to parse the terminology before it clicked in her head. "That's good to hear, all the same. I don't think people would want to lose the connections you've helped make, right?" A streeeeetch in the seat. "At least, I can see people moving to and from here, but I try to get their contact info. Even if they come to this school for only a day, there's going to be the Jersey Club ready for whatever." A forlorn sigh.
"Highschool's going to be over before I know it...I wonder how much will change before then." Barely a thought paid to the future: Only the transmutation of such. "Or during it." A shake of her head.
"But that's in the future! We're dealing with the here and now, and I'll find my own answer to it!"
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
<poem> Milly resists the urge to succumb fully to the feeling of nostalgia overwhelming her right now; she might be overempathizing with Madoka, truthfully. It's the sort of thing she has to take a few moments to clamp down on before even returning her attention to the present moment in its entirety.
"I think more will change than you expect. Things that don't change..." Milly trails off, looking away with a somewhat faraway expression. "... don't last very long."
Her eyes shut for a few moments. This... is drawing her attention in stranger directions than she ever expected. It's a little overwhelming, the longer she sits with the feeling. ... When did she become the person she is now? What will she become next?
Madoka, meanwhile -- has the answer. Now first. Later is a little later on. Milly lets out a laugh that's just a bit more emotive, a bit more downcast than she realizes until it's out of her.
"If you need help planning, you already have my number, so don't hesitate to call, okay? I think I'd have fun coordinating things, if only for old times' sake," she offers, nodding to Madoka. "The 'here and now' is where I do most of my best work."