2025-02-06: Chitchats About Idols And Stuff
- Log: Chitchats About Idols And Stuff
- Cast: Aurora Dusk, Liam O'Maol Chonaire
- Where: A park in Orb
- OOC - IC Date: February 6th, UC 0100
- Summary: Aurora and Liam find time to chitchat after the Empress's incursion. Something feels vaguely off about the state of the world, though.
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
You would think that leave is sparse during times of crisis such as an army's parent government being pseudo-dissolved and turning into a shambling zombie-state trying desperately to deny its own death, and you would be partially right. Soldiers generally don't get a lot of leave during times like that. But sometimes, when the crisis is bad enough, not every force gets timely orders. Since most squads aren't really self-directed, they don't tend to find anything specific to do in times like that, and this creates odd pockets of idling during chaotic times. It's during one of these times that Aurora has wandered into the park for fresh air, since she's stationed in Orb. Come to think of it, her brother lives in Orb, in this very city. Maybe...
She's wearing green paramilitary fatigues, maybe passable as a fashion choice, but not out of place in a barracks. The jacket is left semi-unbuttoned to partially reveal a shirt with some kind of design on it, though the details aren't clear at the moment. As soon as she spots Liam from the park bench she happens to be idling near, Aurora waves to him. Well, what are the odds of meeting him here? (She was counting on it.)
<Pose Tracker> Liam O'Maol Chonaire has posed.
He should be happy. The Empress is gone. Yuliana and Elisa are starting a new life for themselves, somewhere they can protect Earth without hurting anyone. He's made peace with himself. He's finally taken back his old name. The world seems to be stepping back from the brink of totalitarian tyranny.
So why, then, does it feel like something's off?
Liam was out for a jog. It's far warmer in Orb than it is elsewhere, and he's in a light hoodie and athletic shorts. As is usual, he keeps a close eye on his surroundings as he runs through the park. There's kids over there playing in the sandbox, and a man that could be a dad keeping an eye on them from a nearby bench. There's another jogger out walking her dog. There's Aurora...
Aurora?
Liam jogs up to the bench, and stops, waving discreetly in greeting. "Aurora," he says, his tone warm despite the dense tangle of anger that gets a little larger each time he sees her. It's not her fault. "It's good to see you again." What's she doing here?
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
Now that she thinks about it, things are wrong. She's not sure how, exactly. Maybe it's some sixth sense beyond what she usually experiences, maybe it's the sharpened instincts of a 'counterintelligence' agent, maybe it's just the hackles of an abused child. Things are moving too fast. NUNE fell apart far too fast. Like someone or something was greasing the gears. She can't quite pinpoint what's wrong, but she knows that something is.
Ah, never mind that. Liam's here. Aurora shakes her head and returns his greeting with that tone that always sounds relieved to see that he's still around. "Liam. Good to see you too."
Somewhere, she notes that he always seems to get a little angrier when she's around. Her brows furrow slightly. Is it something she did? "How are you doing? I had some free time, and I was stationed here, so I'm going to the park. Smells nice here."
"...you wouldn't think I'd get this much free time in a crisis, but I guess orders are in short supply right now," she adds a little quieter
<Pose Tracker> Liam O'Maol Chonaire has posed.
Aurora's fate is still an open question. Liam promised Yuliana he'd help her, and he intends to honor that. But will she let him? Anxiety starts to build in the pit of his stomach, and he slips his hands into the pockets of his shorts. He runs his fingers along the fabric. Focusing on that sensation helps ground him.
"It does," he says. "Fresh air. Plants." Liam's eyes trail across the scenery, as if admiring it, but he never really lets Aurora out of his sight. "I'm glad you got free time."
Liam offers a sympathetic nod, and steps a little closer. "What's happening?" he says, lowering his voice. "With the Gaia Sabers, that is. Things feel strange right now."
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
"Me too. It's hard to swing sometimes, but lately the chain of command..." Aurora looks off into the distance. "...is a little bit... shaky."
Aurora appreciates the sympathy, and Liam is familiar enough with her subtler facial expressions to tell. He steps closer, and she lowers her voice in response. She's familiar with hushed conversations and secrets. "Yeah, things are weird lately. Like they're moving too fast. The way NUNE fell apart... Everything is lining up in odd ways. I don't know how to put it." She clears her throat. "At first, there was a constant stream of work and panic... long periods without breaks. All kinds of stuff. We were patrolling the Gibraltar border, doing exercises in the AEU... I think it's still the AEU anyway. Technically," she says while waving her hand in a wishy-washy way. "I think the Colonel spent a consecutive 56 hours awake at one point. But then I didn't have any work to do. Orders stopped coming." She looks thoughtful. "I guess they had bigger things to worry about than what any individual squad was doing. A few of my teammates went missing." Aurora fiddles with her shirt anxiously. "The team lead for a team I was attached to vanished, and so did her machine. A Strike E type. There's talk she deserted. A couple of the rest of the Second Advanced Response Team disappeared right after."
"I hope Flay is all right. Deserters tend to meet with sticky ends, and defectors doubly so." She shudders. Hopefully, it doesn't come to that. Aurora isn't keen to feel Flay's neck in her hands.
<Pose Tracker> Liam O'Maol Chonaire has posed.
Liam's face folds into a familiar, thoughtful frown as Aurora speaks. He takes it all in, and tries not to extrapolate too much. It's difficult, for someone used to seeing someone else's hand in things, even if 'someone else' is just a nebulous concept of fate, or bad luck.
Patrols. Breakdowns in the chain of command. A team leader who went missing. Liam's eyes widen as Aurora finally drops the name. "Flay," he says. "Flay Allster?" There's recognition in his gaze. He knows enough about her to know she's one of the Gaia Sabers' faces, or was. "Did anything strange happen before she left? Changes in her behavior, instability in her home nation?"
Maybe she got out. Liam hopes she got out.
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
"Yeah, Flay Allster. From the Archangel Corps initially. 2ART used to be the Soma unit before whoever that was got reassigned. I think she was a super-soldier of some kind." It would have been nice, Aurora observes, to serve under someone like her. Well, the Lilium escort squadron technically answers to her, and there's always Gatsby.
Huh. Weird that every cyborg she knows is a cool dude.
...Does Lilium count as a cyborg now?
"Strange... Aside from what I'm already telling you, I think she started feeling... uncomfortable shortly before she left. As for chaos in her home nation... she comes from AEU Britain, and the AEU is falling apart harder than NUNE in general right now." Aurora hums. "Aside from that, she didn't look very... pleased, when she found out what I was. A Cyber-Newtype, I mean."
Aurora continues her infodump. "Let's see... the AEU collapsing, there was Durandal's announcement... You probably know Orb was supposed to join NUNE, but that's up in the air right now. We've got a military alliance, now." She blinks. "...we as in the Gaia Sabers. I have the weird feeling that NUNE is going to stop counting as a state. I wonder where that leaves us. There's historical precedent," she mumbles, "but it isn't very good."
"Oh, on that note: A bunch of forces got recalled, since the Sabers are a combination of every bloc force. We lost most of the REA guys. Still have a few of the spooks though. I don't think the new government is going to stay with us. Still have a lot of the AEU though, but the bloc is falling apart. There are riots and everything. The supply lines are fucked, but some of the funding issues are solving themselves because we lost a bunch of personnel too. There was a payroll computer glitch, though."
Aurora pauses her infodumping and turns to look at Liam, taking a seat on the bench. "NERV are a NUNE organisation, right? At least the funding comes from us. How's things on your end? Anyone quit? Enough parts and people to fix your machines? Did you get paid this month?" She pouts. "Cause I didn't. Still got fed though, so that's good."
<Pose Tracker> Liam O'Maol Chonaire has posed.
Liam winces in sympathy. He knows what it's like when a friend disappears without warning. It happened all the time in the lab, and it scarred him. (He did that to Aurora, he reminds himself. And a moment later: if he hadn't, they would both be in the same, horrid situation.) "Wasn't her dad military, too?" he asks, because sometimes a little research into an acquaintance can turn up unexpected connections.
Didn't react well when she found out. He wonders why. (He doesn't.)
The gloom in Liam's eyes deepens. "It feels scary right now, yeah." It honestly wasn't so much the revelation that there's a conspiracy of horrid ghouls in power--no shit, is Liam's opinion on that--but how everything seems to be moving too fast. Why did Durandal sit on that knowledge until now? "Lucine and I have been keeping our heads down. We haven't seen a lot of that so far, and NERV's been weathering it okay." He winces at the mention of the glitch. How do they expect people to fight if they can't even pay them reliably?
Liam shakes his head. "Some of the REA and AEU people went back home," he says. "Otherwise, not much. Commander Ikari is still bringing in the money. Enough to keep things running normally at Tokyo-3."
Liam's hand presses against his outer thigh, and the wallet in his pocket. "If you need money in the meantime," he says, the very image of concern, "I can spot you some."
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
That's right, he did, didn't he? Is Aurora mad about it? She doesn't really show any signs of it. (To be fair, she finds it hard to really hold things against him.) On the other hand, she's used to it too. Not many survivors from her cohort. She thinks for a second. "Yeah, he was a ship captain or something I think. Blue Cosmos connections, but it seemed like Flay wasn't into keeping them up."
"Entirely fair, honestly. I can't stand them either. They've got one track minds and there are too many nepotism hires," she grumbles. "A lot's been changing and it's been changing fast. Like the gears are greased. I don't like it. Something about it sets my instincts on edge. Stay careful..."
She hears the news that NERV is doing well enough, and her mood lightens. "That's good to hear. Commander Ikari would be able to do it, I guess... The announcement was kind of a shock, and," she lowers her voice even more, "did you know that Logos members have started going missing in the AEU? They're fleeing in large numbers. It's like someone is targeting them. As for the funding thing, there's talk of them dumping money into the Sabers. All this is stuff I overheard. It's like operational security is falling apart, too."
Liam offers to open his pocket for her, and Aurora is touched. Her face softens. "I don't really need anything right now, and I still get room and board, so I'm fine. If people weren't getting to eat, there wouldn't BE a Gaia Sabers, there'd be a hundred different bands of marauders. I think the Colonel would just take me and go be a space pirate or something." There's precedent for THAT, too. "Ah, there's an exception to the bloc thing, by the way. Some people from the AEU and REA were recalled, some went home, but nobody from Britannia got recall orders and very few are going home. I think they're the bloc that we have the firmest ties with at the moment. I know I didn't get recalled..." Aurora has mixed feelings about that. On one hand, she didn't get recalled! On the other hand, she probably wouldn't have been sent back even if she WAS from the REA or something.
"The intelligence agencies are in chaos, too. Did you know that every bloc's intelligence apparatus was supposed to be folded into the Sabers? It only sort of worked, and the N.I.B. is a bunch of agencies in a trenchcoat. Losing the REA probably stung the worst there, but don't underestimate Britannia's military intelligence." She fiddles with her shirt under her jacket - the shirt with the Lilium-themed designs.
<Pose Tracker> Liam O'Maol Chonaire has posed.
Something clicks. Liam thinks back to his own encounters with Flay, and everything makes a bit more sense. She finally decided she'd had enough of her father's horrid ideology? Liam hopes so. Good on her, if she managed to escape.
"You've noticed that, too?" Liam's voice grows even quieter--like he's afraid of this invisible gear-greaser overhearing them. "Feels like something happened, but I don't know what. Everything's moving too fast." Maybe having confirmation will help him feel like this isn't just him going crazy. He lets Aurora talk, and does not voice the grim satisfaction he feels when she talks about Logos.
Liam's face twists. "I'm glad she didn't," he says, trying to wring humor out of the situation. "I don't think the pirate's life is for you. Or the roving marauder life." Intelligence is in chaos? While it feels like they dodged a bullet, he can't help but wonder what's going on there, and...
A familiar face catches his eye. It's not Aurora's. Liam glances down, puzzled, as he tries to figure out who the mystery star is, and why he recognizes her. Tokyo-3, he saw her at one of the checkpoints after NUNE formed. She...
"Lilium?" he says, without context. Liam pauses a beat, meets Aurora's eyes, and pinkens a little in embarrassment. "Your shirt," he explains. "Is that her? Some kind of squadron in-joke?"
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
Aurora nods, and draws in slightly closer. "Greased gears usually mean there's a gear-greaser... Maybe it's Durandal, somehow, but... if it is him, he'd have to have a much further reaching intelligence network than I'm aware. There's an ominous feeling hanging over everything lately." It's broad daylight, but Aurora still can't help that slight shiver going down her spine. "There's a feeling like... I dunno. Stagnant air, maybe. Like when you walk outside and smell ozone?"
"You'd be surprised. I have a pretty wide skillset. Remember the room-breaching drills? I think I'd be good at hiding buried treasure, too... but I'd rather be the one digging it up." Something in her eyes glitters like gold. The romance of pirate treasure... "...maybe there's still some Zeon pirate gold left over."
"I think NIB is falling apart worse than the regular forces. It'll all probably... well, the pieces should fall back down again, and I think there are enough people who care that it'll still work. Probably." A noncommital shrug gets added to the end of that. Of course Aurora would have her finger on the pulse of shady bureaus and intelligence operations, but this kind of shakeup is unprecedented. "A lot of movement and not much of it is well-coordinated, though. To be fair," Aurora adds, traces of a snicker appearing, "we don't have many coordinators." She looks entirely too pleased with herself for that one.
"Lilium Valerie? You know her?"
"Yeah, she was in my squad. She's... it's in limbo, now." Aurora removes her fatigue jacket to show off her shirt. Lilium in a fluffy outfit on a black background, striking a pose, with the words 'MY IDOL OF PEACE LILIUM' across the bottom. It's an obvious pre-production - the words TEST and NOT FOR COMMERCIAL USE are stamped across it. Clearly liberated from some stock pile by crafty fingers. "She got taken off my squad, kind of. Career change. She hasn't debuted yet, but she's going to do a charity concert..." Aurora explains wistfully. She misses her, to be honest. "They did up a custom VF for her and everything."
<Pose Tracker> Liam O'Maol Chonaire has posed.
Liam nods. "I don't think it's Durandal," he says. "If he were, why wait until now? Strange enough he waited this long when the rest of NUNE has had a knife at his throat since the Junius drop." A feeling like stagnant air. "I'm going to have to keep an eye out for that," he says. "Be careful. Tsutsujidai taught me that sometimes, if something feels off, it's because there's things happening on bits of the world we barely understand."
He smiles, a little, at the thought of buried treasure. "I hope you'd share, if you found some," Liam says. "It'd be nice to have a house." Rather than cringe at Aurora's joke, he focuses on the mystery shirt. "I met her a few times," Liam says. "I flew with her." The thoughtful frown returns as he gets a better look at the shirt. "Where'd you get it, then?" Career change? "She's an idol singer now? Really?"
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
Aurora nods back. "I will. I've learned to keep my eyes open in my line of work."
"Don't worry. If I get a treasure map, you're on my list of people to invite to piracy. I don't know what I'd do with a house, though. I basically live on a series of bases. Maybe I'd keep stuff there. Maybe I'd put up posters and invite people over. I feel a little like I'm imposing when I do what I did last time... though when I practice baking in the mess halls, when I succeed the staff are happy for the help. They used to get mad, though. Because I was bad at it."
"You flew with her? When?"
"Yeah, she's an idol now. I heard," and at this point Aurora returns to conspiratorial whispering, "that she's going to sing in Tarabaman First Gen. The shirt comes from..." Aurora clasps her hands awkwardly. "...from pre-production. It was just lying on the floor... in a box... in a room that was probably supposed to be locked..." She smiles awkwardly, having just confessed to stealing from... somewhere.
<Pose Tracker> Liam O'Maol Chonaire has posed.
"Houses are expensive," Liam admits. "If the piracy thing doesn't work out, it can wait." Joking aside, it feels like it's become more serious to him. He's found the woman he wants to spend his life with. He wants to have a family with her. "I liked the brownies," he adds, on the subject of baking. "And you live in the Colonel's house, too, right?"
When was that? "Months back, at least," Liam ways. "Think it might've been one of the Vajra incursions." And now, she's an idol. Liam's eyes widen as Aurora leans in. He shrugs, slightly. "I won't tell anyone. She did seem to have that kind of personality, though--did a record company find her, or is somebody else managing her?" If she's got her very own VF, they must have money, at least.
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
"Yeah, you must have worked hard for it. Especially with the medical costs... I'm proud of my brother. And thanks. I worked hard on the brownies, too."
Aurora looks down slightly. "I don't spend enough time there to say I live there... Mostly, I live wherever I'm deployed, and that always changes. There are stretches of time where we don't see each other... But when we're both free, sometimes I go there. When I was in the rehab centre, she visited me sometimes... Or we go to the coast. The sound of the sea is relaxing... did you know my file lists 'aquatic operations' as a skill? I'm pretty good with things that go underwater."
"Vajra are sons of bitches. One of my postings with Lilium, Ashcroft and... Flay, was an anti-Vajra task force. Not that it's getting more funding now, and it was threadbare to begin with. We wrecked a couple of GN-Xs and - get this - we asked for flamethrowers. Do you know what they gave us?" She pauses to allow a guess. "The GM Quels we had in stock. Some kind of sick joke." Aurora makes an unhappy face at the incredible lowballing of the materiel her unit needed. "Didn't even repaint it..."
"I think she still has her military rank. Being managed internally, too... It's more like an internal career track change. I didn't know we were in the business of making idols..."
"...I think since I'm legally an adult now, the Colonel's legal guardianship has expired. We set it up at first because she took an interest, and it was better to have at least one person who was supposed to care specifically about me... but I think she'll always be the mentor I look up to."
<Pose Tracker> Liam O'Maol Chonaire has posed.
Liam smiles. "I could tell," he says. He's less enthused about Aurora's thoughts about home. "You should have a place to feel safe. Even if that's not Emily's house. Somewhere you can go. Like the apartment. And yeah, being by the water can be nice. Lucine and I took a vacation on Tenican, once, at her boss's expense--best time I'd had in months. Being able to walk out and watch the sunrise was real soothing."
Less soothing: the whole Vajra situation. Just, all of it. "GM Quels?" Liam's brows shoot up. His face twists into something that's not quite a scowl of anger. "'Budget issues'. Like they can't divert funds from whatever bespoke war cri--" He cuts himself off in mid-sentence, takes a breath, and focuses. "Sorry." It's an old sort of reaction.
"...Still military?" That's weird. It's like someone saw what Ranka was doing, and decided it wasn't enough. "That's... kind of weird." Liam takes another breath. "Getting set up is a pain in the ass," he says. "But if it's something you want to do, I've done a lot of it. You need advice, I'm here. Not legal advice, obviously, just how to get around what's left of the systems."
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
"Yeah, and I could tell it paid off," she adds with a note of pride. "Feeling safe is more like a condition of time than space for me... the inside of a fortified base is pretty good for that, though. But lately, it's..." Aurora frowns. "...it's a little hard to feel safe under the sky, sometimes. Maybe an apartment would be nice. Or a seaside house... a little hard to afford on my salary, though. Probably have to rent..."
"Yeah, GM Quels. They were pretty good for their time, but... I guess they heard 'flamethrower' and went out of their way to penny pinch, since those have those." Aurora grumbles. "It's just like the Hell Uprising. 'Getting anyone to care was like pulling teeth'," she quotes. "We get invaded by space bugs and the best they can do is Nightmares? Not that it wasn't a reliable special forces machine, but again, out of date. Actually, why DON'T we get good Variable Fighters? We don't have much in the way of things that fly outside of GN-Xs. There's some stuff in the pipeline, like an Anksha update, but it's not done yet and RnD might also have gotten budget screwed in places."
"Yeah, I didn't know we were in the idol business. Apparently it sucks, too. There are all kinds of rules these days and things that cause scandals." Aurora rolls her eyes. "I remember the Colonel hearing about it and just going on this, rant about how back in the day people were speculating Minmay was dating her cousin and it didn't sink any careers. I don't envy Lilium..." She puts a lot of stock in what Emily says, but this is a pretty standard opinion among female idol followers too."
Advice is definitely appreciated, since Aurora has never house-hunted before. "Thanks. I'll keep that in mind.
<Pose Tracker> Liam O'Maol Chonaire has posed.
"Renting's complicated. Worth it, though, if it gets you a place that feels like yours. Lu and I got lucky like that." Pride glimmers in Liam's eyes as he smiles, but it's tempered by yet another reminder that others aren't as fortunate--like Aurora, here. And the things they've talked about already feel far more grave than credit checks and cosigning rent agreements. The Sabers' leadership is making horrid decisions, but regrettably, that's also nothing new. Liam nods in sympathy, and the little knot of anger in him sharpens a little more.
"That still doesn't explain why they decided an idol singer was a wise investment," Liam says, once Aurora's said her piece. "Especially if they can't give their own soldiers the guns they need to fight aliens." Some of the anger creeps into his voice--it's not aimed at Aurora, but at her superiors, and the absurdity of all this. "Unless..." Liam's face falls. "You don't think they want to use her as their in-house Ranka, do they? Ranka's worked with the SAL. The Sabers hate them."
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
Aurora listens with interest to Liam's explanation of homeowning. Could she do it, she wonders? She doesn't get a lot of money, but she does have a particular skillset... maybe she could moonlight or something, if the situation wasn't so hectic or she could convince the Colonel to lie about what she was doing. It'd be nice to have her own place, but work barely gives her the time to stay in one place, and when she does, she's comfortable with Emily. Still...
"An in-house Ranka... that was my first thought, actually. The SAL was a part of 'NUNE', as a member bloc... but it was never a part of NUNE, if that makes sense. Even before Durandal's announcement, ZAFT in particular was treated as a foreign army, and the tensions go all the way back to before Break the World." Aurora rubs her chin thoughtfully."We have too many competing RnD projects all trying to push their own particular new model machine, and too many covert operations groups and special interests all trying to push their pet agenda, I think."
Aurora turns to look directly at Liam. "Do you think this is going to actually break out into open warfare?" The curiosity is directed at what his stance is, not whether or not war is coming. She's already formed her own- no, she already KNOWS what's coming. In her bones, in the creases of her stomach.
<Pose Tracker> Liam O'Maol Chonaire has posed.
"Exactly," Liam says. "I don't think you'd be surprised if I said the people in charge of NUNE hate Coordinators. Wasn't that long ago they were shooting at each other." He folds his arms across his chest, and nods. "So it's when and how they made their plan, and not whether they would." Liam looks away from Aurora for a moment, his eyes settling on a bed of flowers. "Ranka wouldn't have wanted this, I don't think," he says.
Would she? Did she have any say in the matter when somebody arranged an iconic song into a war anthem?
"She wanted to protect people," Liam says. His eyes close for a moment--a brief display of trust in someone he knows is a trained killer, like him. "That shouldn't get you a bad end, but it does, all the damn time. I hate it."
Liam unfolds his arms. "I hope not. I hope whatever's happening is a push towards less of that. I'm ready to be disappointed."
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
"You're thinking right." Aurora's face is blank with the exact opposite of surprise. "Blue Cosmos has always had too much influence in the military. They're not particularly subtle about their feelings." The BC officers are always the worst. "I'm not surprised. There are always plans being made by somebody, even in peacetime."
Wait, what- "-happened to Ranka?" The way Liam looks away, at the flowers. She wouldn't have wanted this. Her bad ending... "...You're talking about her like she died. Is she..." Aurora's voice leaks concern. She only met Ranka once... and if she's gone...
Aurora briefly wonders if Liam should close his eyes around her, and then she wonders where that thought came from. She wouldn't feel endangered by him... but then again, he has more to worry about from her, considering the quasi-lies she gave him when he asked about what happened since he left. Actually, speaking of that. "...In that four years inbetween us seeing each other, what happened? I know you signed up with NERV and met Lucine..."
A step away from the brink, is it? Aurora makes a noncommital sounding 'hrm' noise. "I'm not holding my breath. ...Have you ever heard of the concept of 'gray zone warfare'?"
<Pose Tracker> Liam O'Maol Chonaire has posed.
"What?" Liam blinks. A moment later, he realizes what Aurora must've taken away from his phrasing. "Oh, no, she's not--" It would be all over the news if she was. 'Patriotic songstress cut down in the prime of her youth' on every single site and feed. But the way Liam feels...
Hasn't he almost written her off already? Abandoned her to the military because she's a star, now, and she definitely doesn't need him and Lucine to do more than protect her in combat?
"I knew her before she made it big, that's all. She just wanted to sing, and to make people happy. And then everybody found out about her powers, and now she's a weapon." Liam lets that sit for a moment before answering Aurora's question. "I got involved in anti-kaiju operations. I fought every Angel that showed its face. Triple Zero, too, when it got real bad." A pause. Liam shakes his head. "No. What's it mean?"
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
"Oh. Oh!" Aurora starts snickering. "The way you said that... It sounded like a eulogy. 'She would never have wanted this for us'... I only saw her once, but I'm glad about that. I didn't know you knew her... I guess we both knew idols before their debut."
'And now she's a weapon.' "Huh. Do you still talk to her?" She figured it was something like that. Maybe Liam can wish her luck on her behalf.
"Huh. You've done pretty well for yourself. Maybe they'll call you 'a veteran of the Angel Wars' someday... If another one shows up, I hope I can be there to help." Aurora takes her own turn staring at the flower bed. "How's NERV? Working there, I mean." Fighting kaiju sounds like honest work. Though she can't discount the possibility he gets asked to do shadier things.
Aurora clears her throat. "It's what we call the twilight between war and peace. A period dominated by covert groups and espionage as opposed to standing armies and large battles. It's the playground of organisations with names like Operations Division or Nega Force or ECOAS or Counterintelligence. Anything with Special Operations in the name is something you can be sure gets involved. Conflicts are carried out quietly and often without being acknowledged at all under the surface. That's where we've been for a while now."
"Back during the aftermath of Break the World, we thought it would flare up into open conflict, but... it didn't happen. The grey zone stayed grey, even though it looked like things were going to blow up. That's how it feels now, just... more..." Aurora struggles to find the words for a few seconds. "More wrong. I'm sorry, I can't explain it better than that. I've never felt exactly like this before..."
<Pose Tracker> Liam O'Maol Chonaire has posed.
Liam shakes his head. "I'd have to go through her agents if I wanted to," he says. "And her security." The only times he's ever been in her vicinity have been the immediate aftermath of the operations. Otherwise, she's been secure in her little cocoon of stardom. "Heh," he adds, humorlessly. "I guess we did."
"It's a steady job doing necessary work," is Liam's assessment of NERV. "And you probably would. Kind of an all-hands-on-deck situation when one shows up. It takes an Eva to bring the A.T. Field down, but anybody can shoot it once it's unshielded." He's still terribly ambivalent about the whole thing.
"So it's the name for that," Liam says, as something clicks. "Makes sense. And yeah, I think you're right."
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
Aurora ponders a question. "Do you want to see her?"
"Does she want to see you?"
That's sort of Aurora's assessment of her own work, she realises. She goes back and forth on what her actual role and nature as a person is, but she isn't totally faithless. The ambivalence is something they both share. Work's work, and they're good at what they do. Business as usual.
Liam is a quick study, isn't he? He was always smart. "Exactly. I get to see a lot of the back end, from where I'm standing. Things aren't always as they seem. I still think that war will happen."
"Oh, you might be seeing more of me even if it does. You know Orb has a military alliance with the Gaia Sabers? There are more troop movements here lately." Fine by her, honestly.
<Pose Tracker> Liam O'Maol Chonaire has posed.
Aurora deploys two cutting questions, back-to-back. Liam lets out a breath. It takes him a moment to answer. "Yes," he says. "And I don't know." He's suddenly feeling a bit sadder, and more vulnerable. He shifts a little, and takes a focusing breath.
"I do, yeah. Either way, I'll stay in touch." He meets Aurora's eyes again. "Listen, Aurora. I have to pick up a few things before I head back to the apartment. Don't want it getting too late. It was good running into you again."
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
And that's halfway to the intended effect. Aurora fixes her blue eyes on Liam's. "If you never see her, you'll never know. Obstacles aren't always completely impassable, depending on the skills available to you." Is she trying to accomplish anything in particular? Not really. If Liam wants to see Ranka, he should try. If he needs help getting past those agents, Aurora will see about helping. She was deliberate about wording 'the skills available', after all.
"Mm." It was good to run into- "You too, brother. It might be difficult, especially if a war happens, but I'll try. Good luck out there."