2024-10-30: Avrorka
- Log: Avrorka
- Cast: Yuliana Kafim, Aurora Dusk
- Where:Choir, Mongolia
- OOC - IC Date: 10-30-0099
- Summary: While walking through a tent city in Mongolia, Yuliana encounters an assassin she doesn't know she trained. Yuliana and Aurora recover their memories of each other while fighting, but Yuliana's attempt to retrieve her wayward protege is foiled before Aurora can turn her down properly.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
The tent city around Choir, Mongolia is more of a tent village, now; not everyone has been housed, following Break the World, but a concerted effort between the Silent Calling and the Yumi Foundation have seen dozens on dozens of homes restored back to the point of livability.
It stands to reason, then, that the woman walking through Choir tonight walks through the town instead of the tents; her black robes are familiar, here, and warmly welcomed. Bolormaa -- 'Crystal Mother', as they call her -- is a woman who wears a hijab obscuring her face, though the scars there haven't always been perfectly covered. Over time, GSB has built a dossier on this leader of the Silent Calling; they've come to believe that she isn't a Mongolian Speaker, like the nonbinary Davaa, but in fact the Oracle herself in disguise.
That is: Yuliana Kafim.
And while it's important to act with caution around Yuliana Kafim -- largely because her wife's powers are strange and far-reaching -- there are surely those who would like to act, even if to ask her some questions before her inevitable release. It's unfortunate that Yuliana getting so invested in helping Choir has led to her over-using one of her false identities, but that's a fact of life, being on the run.
Right now, she's heading to one particular home to make sure they're coping all right in a building without any electricity as of yet; unfortunately, the closest route to that home is through an alleyway, around a dozen discarded cardboard boxes and ruined furniture from the eternal reconstruction.
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
Aid workers and volunteers are never really scrutinised, are they? Especially not in the wake of such a disaster. This kind of event rarely gives you the slack to be picky. While there is no shortage of do-gooders pouring into the corners of the world (and of news stories about the events pouring back out, streamed back onto mass media as propaganda), there is even less shortage of crises that need resolving.
Under these circumstances, who'd pay any attention to a skeleton crew showing up in a tent village in Mongolia with whatever scraps of aid they could put together?
It's the perfect cover, really. Barely even a cover - setting it up took no work at all.
'Bolormaa' probably should have been more careful. That dossier is thick indeed. NUNE intelligence (more like wetwork) has a bullet with her name on it, and that bullet is called Aurora Dusk.
Aurora has been doing some aid work, of course, while looking for her target. It's not a task she was trained to do, but anybody can pass out food and blankets. It's definitely not the kind of task she usually does, and she's not sure how to feel about that. At least it helps somebody.
Now, though, isn't the time to ponder that. Aurora has sighted her quarry walking into a quiet alleyway. The perfect opportunity to decapitate one of the heads of Dawn of Fold. Who could pass it up?
Silent footfalls creep behind the robed woman, as the Gaia Sabers' snake in the grass prepares to strike... of course, Yuliana is no amateur herself. How likely is it that Aurora will actually manage to take her by surprise...?
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
The problem with Aurora sneaking up on Yuliana, of course, is just how loud the absence is. That sense that something's missing -- that she should see something, and doesn't -- that's the first clue she has to listen.
It's followed by the clues from the physical world. Those are the ones which let her localise just where the sneakthief is.
For a few steps, she keeps walking normally -- as if she hadn't realised a thing. To pause or slow -- or to speed up -- would betray her own hand. With that same deliberation, she walks, hands clasped lightly in front of her...
... until, without warning, she turns and springs back the way she came.
Did anyone warn Aurora about the tentacles? This woman has tentacles. And as her frill raises, writhing under her hijab, that horrible emptiness spills out from around her to fill the alleyway and the streets of the town. Not only constrained to the area beside her, any more, the absence of psychic communication plunges them both into the darkness of the alley.
Just as she lashes out, with a hand, towards the first flash of metal she sees. Get in close, get in fast, and it doesn't matter if they're armed -- disarming an assailant is more valuable than pulling out her own gun, in a situation like this. It's a principle she's held for many years.
The same principle she's taught to others.
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
Yuliana's sudden turn and attack is surprising, but it doesn't catch Aurora off guard. She's made of stern enough stuff that an attack by an enemy she was stalking anyway isn't enough to rattle her.
No, the tentacles aren't surprising. Well, they aren't a surprise to see on Yuliana, anyway. Aurora was briefed on Yuliana before being sent to kill her, of course. This is NUNE's intelligence apparatus we're talking about - and not the surface bumblers. The depths, with organs with simple names like "Operations Division" and "Counterintelligence". Those are the sections you really need to watch out for - the ones that don't advertise what they are. Aurora, too, is used to not advertising what she is.
The horror aura, too, was in the briefing, and Aurora has been steeling herself to deal with it this entire time... but as the gnawing cold begins teething on her soul, she's learning that steeling yourself in preparation for something you've been told about and actually experiencing it firsthand are two different things. Everything is colder, now. More... separate. Her reactions aren't dulled, but everything feels muted, compared to how it usually is.
She whips out the weapon she was preparing as soon as she realises she's been rumbled. It's a moment too late. Aurora's hand slashes forwards, and Yuliana's hand leaps to intercept, and the knife that was in Aurora's hand flies over a good few metres out of reach as Yuliana closes.
Aurora's instincts, the ones ingrained in her by years of training, take over, and she replies with her own assault. Three jabs to the midsection, and then she tries to seize an incoming arm to break. The tentacles, she's not quite sure how to deal with, but she's had a couple of days to puzzle over it.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"Tch," that's Yuliana's voice, spitting air as it's forced from her diaphragm out her throat. The fat around her midsection obscures muscle, but a solid blow to the gut will wind even an experienced assailant. Right?
Those three blows give Aurora the edge to get her hands on her arm. The problem when seizing Yuliana's arm to snap it is that her arm has been tempered like most men haven't, re-inforced bone structure still protecting her even years out of her lab. With her arm grasped, she can't use it to attack, even if it is too hard to break through normal methods... which might have given Aurora the edge, if not for those tentacles.
They chomp into the girl's arms, with claws like snatching jaws, as Yuliana presses herself right up against the arm which Aurora has painfully trapped, closer to the other girl's body --
-- and just, straight-up headbutts her.
That can't be legal or fair!
(But it's exactly the sort of dirty trick she uses.)
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
Trying to break Yuliana's arm proves to be no good. Aurora just can't get the leverage she'd need like this, and a half-assed chop won't cut it against a fellow Cyber-Newtype. (Aurora tries not to think too hard about the 'fellow' part.)
Still, at least having one of her opponent's arms trapped gives her the advantage, right? Only one arm left to-
Right. The tentacles. Aurora is definitely not used to opponents with tentacles, and, reacting too late, she hisses as the claws dig into her arms. Leaning on her training, she steps closer to Yuliana to deploy the exact sort of dirty trick you need to survive this career. Her head jerks back briefly before flying forwards --
-- straight into Yuliana's head, like hitting her own reflection.
The natural result of a mutual headbutt isn't pretty. Aurora yelps, grip slacking as she dazedly stumbles back briefly, hand flying up to forehead.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"Ghh--!!" Yuliana snarls, as she, too, suffers the horrors of being met with someone else's headbutt. Of course her head is killing her, after something like that; her head has always been a touch sensitive, with those additions to her CSF making everything feel much more fragile. (It's more like a little extra pressure.)
She doesn't have time to think about that, though. With that step back, she plants her foot on the ground, hiking her robes up briefly to grasp the pistol she's strapped to her thigh. The black fabric tumbles back down as she aims her side-arm at her assailant, squaring her stance to help with her aim. What ought to happen next is that she fires.
It's just...
"Who are you?" She hisses through her teeth instead, something still writhing behind her ears under her hijab, plunging the alleyway into silence. Her pupilless green eyes are endless, boring into the girl, trying to sort out just why her head hurts so much. Was it really just the blow?
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
Enhanced Aurora may be, and maybe it's helping, but headbutt cross-counters are one of those things that will always fuck you up, even if you've had work done. The aftermath of that poor decision... adds itself to the building headache that was already there? For a moment, Aurora worries that she hasn't taken her medicine on schedule... no, it can't be that. She definitely did take it. Ah well. This happens sometimes anyway. Rotten luck for it to start around when she caught up to Yuliana...?
Not that Aurora stops for long; she can't afford to sit on the floor clutching her head. When Yuliana draws her pistol, Aurora pursues, sliding in and attacking on reflex.
Get in close. Get in fast. Disarming an assailant is better than pulling out your own gun.
Where did she learn that, anyway?
Who is she? Who are you? Stupid question. Of course she knows the face in front of her. Her memory is bad, but not that bad. It's Yuliana Kafim.
Kafim?
The feeling of pressure behind her eyes gets worse, but Aurora pushes past it.
Yuliana's question is answered by a barrage of attacks, all recognisable. It's an eclectic style. That disarming strike followed by vicious combo is the type of thing you'd learn from former Titans ECOAS. The claw hand after that is a trick from Lodonia, and the throat chop will be familiar to anyone who's seen the Ninth Special Operations Unit 'Werewolves' in action -- the Captain (the other one) has clearly rubbed off on her 'daughter'. And the glue holding it all together is...
REA special forces? No, more specific than that. Nega Force. A good deal of this moveset comes from Yuliana. Where did this girl learn THAT from?
Aurora herself has noticed the similiarity. Somehow, her opponent's style is an uncanny mirror of hers... and the Horror Aura is starting to get to her. She's not used to
having that... pit of hunger under her, leeching her warmth. The cold is creeping into her soul, and the stress onto her
face with it.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana does fire, when the girl in front of her elects to press the attack despite the gun in front of her. But Aurora's well-trained -- even with Yuliana muffling her intuitive warnings of danger, she still manages to evade the bullet. The speed of sound being rent asunder echoes, in the cramped alleyway, as deafening physically as that aura is psychically.
The gun scatters from her hand -- if Aurora manages to retrieve it later, she'll find it to be black-market fare, without a clear chain of custody to link it back to anyone. But Yuliana does recognise the style; it's why she can respond to it all so well. Fist to fist, blow to blow, she narrows it down --
Until she's screaming, even as she strikes. "Who are you?" She yells, again, into the night. "Who ARE you?! These are my moves, damn you! WHO ARE YOU?!"
That maddening aura... she's constantly held there.
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
The two are evenly matched... too even. It's no use. Their fighting styles are, at their hearts, too similar. Each blow strikes its (sometimes imperfect, but recognisable) twin in a blurry dance, like shapes twisting in a foggy mirror.
But the cracks are starting to show in Aurora's mask. The physically deafening noise of the gunshot was nothing to her; she experiences that regularly. But its psychic equivalent... there's nothing else quite like that in this world. The tension isn't so much creeping as pouring into her face.
Finally, between the sucking wound of a psychic landscape around her and the painful worms in her own skull, Aurora is dragged into the icy pit as she trades blows with the woman in front of her. The woman in front of her has no face. No face. There is only a void. People are supposed to have faces! Why doesn't she?! Why can't Aurora see her face?! "WHO ARE YOU?! YOU DON'T HAVE A FACE! WHY DON'T YOU HAVE A FACE!"
Perhaps those words are the answer to Yuliana's question?
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Why don't you have a face--?!
"You're blinded by your own transgressions!" Yuliana snaps out, echoing herself for once. What her body remembers it takes longer for her mind to accept, though the evidence is in each mirrored blow. How she'd respond to a question like that --
It's the sort of thing she would have said years ago.
"--rrrrgh!", she snarls frustration through grit teeth, as she slams a foot down past Aurora's hip in order to try and move past her and grapple her. But it's the kind of move Aurora would know, too -- which is how they end up crashing into that pile of cardboard, all in a pile, instead of the attempt to grasp her going cleanly.
"Stop -- squirming!" Yuliana bites out, as she keeps trying to get a hold on the other girl, her tentacles wrapping around her to help her in her trapping attempt. "I won't hurt you if you'll just stop flailing around!"
(Well, those tentacles could be biting her instead, that much at least is true.)
She hisses out a breath, trying her best to secure Aurora so she can't reverse the situation. Her head has crushed one of those cardboard boxes, and it's deeply uncomfortable to twist around in. "Don't you -- get it?! Something's deeply wrong, here! Those words are long and long ago! And you -- you fight with my methods! You -- yoooou -- you! And you come to kill me?! The same logic I'd use -- adopted to you -- and yet you must know what would happen if my wife found me dead! Unless you thought not at all of anything aught the method!"
Her strangeness speaks to her distress, losing grip on herself even as she fights to keep a hold on Aurora, but -- she's clearly trying.
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
Aurora knows Yuliana's move before it comes out, and attempts the first throw reversal that comes to mind. Yuliana knows Aurora's reversal before she uses it, and then the two black ops Cyber-Newtypes are in a pile in the cardboard.
Having two extra limbs is a great help when grappling, and Yuliana starts to gain the upper hand. Aurora is on the floor, thrashing and wailing like an overwhelmed child, as if she's fighting for her life, and Yuliana is trying to hold her down and get her to stop without hurting her (too badly), but being grappled is making Aurora panic more --
-- something about this situation feels familiar, somehow. The two have never met before -- they can't have -- and yet, it feels like they've been in this exact situation before. Has Yuliana ever tried to hold down a panicking child before while they scream about her not having a face?
There's a staticy feeling in Aurora's brain... the numbers are right, but the station isn't transmitting well enough to receive. But there's definitely something trying to break out like a chick trying to crack its shell... Gradually, the thrashing starts lessening, and something like comprehension begins dawning on Aurora's face.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"Why are you always so difficult!" Yuliana snaps, as if they've been here before. (She is not unused to operating in liminal spaces, in the guttering half-light of memories which don't match up to the story.) She didn't have tentacles the first time -- the first time? -- but this girl didn't have the skills she has now, either. It all kind of balances out, into...
"Cheh... God, my fucking head... you're a real headache, you know that?! You, you, you --" once and once again she repeats it, a place where a name ought to go, until her grip tightens with her realisation. "Avrorka..?" She asks, her voice going numb.
(Avrora, the poetic word for an aurora, was a popular Soviet name; no wonder why the nickname Yuliana would use is derived from the Zaftran word.)
"It's you," she says, quieter still. "It is you, isn't it? But -- you left. You left, and -- I don't remember. The others, but not you. You weren't discharged?" She asks, thin and harrow. "They said I ruined you. Even just a girl -- even someone just a girl. But I forgot."
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
'...always so difficult!' The feeling of chill and quiet invading her skull, and the panic that comes with it. Writhing, crying out, thrashing around on the floor, being pressed into it. These are the steps to a dance Aurora has danced before -- she's gotten much better at dancing since then, but Yuliana didn't have tentacles then.
Then? When was then?
"Of course I'm difficult! You taught me to be difficult!"
The name that she's never heard before is instantly recognisable.
Aurora's splitting headache transforms into a cracking headache, and something goopy pours out. The thrashing stops, as that struggling look of realisation finally blooms on her face. She HAS been here before, and she DOES know this person.
"...Huh? I know you from--" Her words are cut off by the aftershock of the headaches, but it soon subsides. "--Captain Dispersal?" The first name for the woman entangled with her that comes to mind is the one from six years ago, the one she used back with the REA. No wonder the 'Kafim' part sounded so strange to her earlier.
"...Discharged? Ruined? What are you talking about? I was..."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"They brought them to me to die," Yuliana says, looking past Aurora, into the alleyway. "Once and once again, in this death of personality. I came to hate them, this constant taunting stream. And became crueler, still."
"Of course," she says, too numb to decorate her words with description. Her mouth is dry.
"I could not remember when they were sympathetic. There was a process. I..."
...
"Taught you," she says, after a pause just long enough to make Aurora wonder if she's even still there. (Her arms are still around her, anyway. Her arms and her arms, or whatever those wretched tendrils are.) "When you were young. You were too young. But I taught you."
"No. Not 'Dispersal'. I do not. I never did. They bound me with the word, alienated me from my blood, made me their monster. But then she found me... my Elisa. Only -- yes -- a year after you. A year, or a little more. They fell in love with me, God and Her image, and Elisa saved me. She saved me. It's 'Kafim'. Yuliana Kafim, and I am free."
Her grip slackens as she is grasped by her own realisations; it would, of course, be the perfect time to turn around and crush her windpipe, gouge out her eyes, slam the heel of her palm forward up towards her nose and force it in.
But...
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
"They didn't bring me to you to die," Aurora says, lying mostly motionless where she is. Now that her memories are coming back, the call of the void... still bothers her, but now that she remembers she got used to it already, she can endure it.
"'Kafim'..." She tests the name out. "'Yuliana... Kafim'."
Aurora slowly puts the pieces together, puzzle-picture fitting clumsily, but correctly. "I remember now. I got sent over... as an... exchange program? And they had me train under you, as a temporary member of your squad. We had our memories erased afterwards, for... identity protection? Something like that... I think." Her throat closes up before she can continue. Seems that what she was going to say next, about the Insititute not being too close with her group, would have been too much.
Of course Aurora spots the opening. But she hesitates. The 'past', fighting with the Nega Force, following Captain D- Yuliana on 'cleaning' missions, is coexisting with the present where they should be enemies. Her orders are clear... but she has more slack when they come from the general command structure she's embedded in and not her actual handlers. She's been told to follow general orders, but it's not like she's expected to follow arbitrary orders from... outside of her circle.
She has enough slack to delay, at least. Yuliana isn't an enemy right this second.
She sighs. "...it seems like everyone I knew back then found someone like that."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"Not physically," Yuliana supposes. "A death of the spirit. Ground them to bits."
It wasn't permanent, though. One of her victims is even working in Cathedra, now... not that she knows that. She doesn't even know Cascade is calling themself Concentric, these days.
"An 'exchange program'," she repeats, still quite numb. "As if you were in school. Damn them." Her head lolls backwards, against the cardboard; her endless eyes squeeze shut, for a moment, as she takes a deliberate breath in and out.
Kafim. That's right. She's a Kafim, now.
She orients back on the firecracker she's holding soon enough, at least, glancing to her sidelong from her position behind her. "And you haven't," she surmises, as a dozen calculations run through her engineer's mind.
She remembers Leina -- who insulted her so grievously she left her to her fate.
And she remembers regretting it.
"Get up." Yuliana pulls one of her own legs up, depending on the grip of her tentacles to let her use one hand to push herself upwards. She speaks with the authority of a Captain, at least, as she says: "I found you! You're coming with me."
Suddenly, the bag and tagger has become -- the bagged and tagged?!
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
"...Coming with you where?" Part of Aurora does want to go with Yuliana, of course. Locking the memories in cold storage makes them relatively fresh, and she straightens up a little when she hears the Captain Voice.
She sees a young child, that understudy of Zaftran Window Disease, who would always follow Yuliana back after a successful mission. She sees, in her mind's eye, a girl who may have messed up sometimes, but always got to follow her Captain in the Nega Force back home.
But it's no longer her.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Managing to get them upright is a monumental task in and of itself -- but getting up with someone who might not necessarily want to be there was a skill Yuliana taught Aurora, too. To be fair: it usually helps if someone else is there to grab the victim. Yuliana doesn't have anyone else, but she does have those awful little snake things coming from her back.
"We're going to meet my wife," Yuliana says, as she starts to do something which can be most charitably called guiding Aurora out of the alleyway. "She'll be pleased to meet you, Avrorka. And we will help you."
She's still keeping quite a tight hold on Aurora for something which sounds so positive, though.
As if she expects Aurora to protest.
"Come along."
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
Aurora of the Gaia Sabers can't go with Yuliana of Dawn of Fold. She wouldn't be able to make that choice even if she was willing to abandon everything else in her life.
She's familiar with the technique Yuliana is using to move her around, of course. They weren't just a murder squad - they had cause to take people alive, too. And Aurora recognises that she's being taken alive... which is maybe strange for Yuliana, but it IS her.
It's heartwarming to hear talk of helping her, but... Aurora knows that that's impossible.
She opens her mouth to speak "...I don't think I can foll-."
At that moment, the alleyway bursts with smoke. It seems Aurora took too long. Of course, the other 'aid workers' were shams too. Shams currently toting their own guns. They don't bother with sneaking, they don't bother with drawn out melee combat, they don't bother with words, and they especially don't bother with silencers. The alleyway is filled with the sound of gunfire again - this time, a deafening cacophony. Yuliana is going to have to run fast. There's little need to worry about Aurora, she'll throw herself to the ground at the earliest opportunity, and the back-up is trying not to hit her.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana might have told Aurora that she's not giving her a choice in the matter -- without thinking that she should, perhaps, give that the context of her previous experiences giving brainwashed soldiers a choice in the matter.
Instead, the next word out of her mouth is: "SHIT!"
Her instinctive reaction is to use Aurora as a human shield -- which might make the fact that she throws her down notable. She doesn't want to fill her small protege full of holes, apparently. But neither does she particularly want a series of new piercings, so she turns and bolts out of the alleyway, throwing down an old bedframe resting on the side of one wall to obscure her path as she goes.
Unfortunately, she won't really be able to stop running until she vaults herself into her stealth shuttle's cockpit, running through the start-up sequence in a hurry as she urges Ghost into the air.
"Shit," she says, again, as she catches her breath.
And then she slams her fist into the console, and yells: "SHIT!" The knuckles of her other hand white on her controls, as she tears away from the scene.
"Avrorka..."
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
Perhaps Aurora might have told her she liked fighting alongside her, if she got the chance, before their farewell. As it stands, the last thing the Oracle hears from her old protege is the yelp and thud of someone with special forces training hitting the deck as fast as they can.
Once the smoke clears, Aurora retrieves her knife and Yuli's gun, and is then swiftly retrieved by the definitely-not-ECOAS unit, no sir, that was a Federation outfit. We're NUNE now. Totally different! All those guys were fired!
The 'aid workers' will be gone before the sun rises, and Avrorka with them. Nothing about this will see the light of day. On the way home, she sets the knife that was knocked out of her hand, and the disposable pistol that Yuliana left behind in front of her. Aurora steeples her fingers, resting her elbows on the table, and her chin on her hands, as she contemplates the two objects.
"Yuli..."