2025-03-08: Goodbye Girl
- Log: Goodbye Girl
- Cast: Leon Sakaki, Aurora Dusk
- Where:
- OOC - IC Date: March 8th, UC 0100
- Summary: Leon spots Aurora cleaning up at an arcade on Frontier, and they play a round. Afterwards, he pumps the strange girl from the concert for a little information, since she was with Lilium, finding out that she's a NUNE pilot. In the process, Leon reveals some of his own past, and realises Aurora feels like the kind of person he wants to protect.
<Pose Tracker> Leon Sakaki has posed.
March 8th, Frontier Island 1. Leon Sakaki walks through the entertainment district on the lower levels of the colony ship with a grimace on his face. He got the call. Everyone did. Leon has no love for the federal government, not after Mina, and the recent announcement by that smug bastard who he shared a first name with somehow managed to drag his opinion lower. Leon's not joining the FDF, that's for sure. But does he want to join the crew of the Quarter in going rogue? More killing, more death and against other people?
Leon's not sure, and so he's taking a walk. The fact that this walk happens to be in one of the more hedonistic districts of the Frontier is entirely by coincidence.
As Leon walks through the arcades, he sees a commotion from one of the nearby simulation centers - people fleeing the building in a huff, with a massive crowd gathered around it. Something interesting is going on over there, and, at least for now, it's better than being alone with his thoughts. Leon walks over to check it out.
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
The commotion in question is centered around a set of combat flight simulators. Fairly accurate ones, for an arcade - not military grade or anything, but the type that being good at actually flying gives you an edge at.
The group that was playing just now seems to be finishing up. Either that, or the large man currently bolting up indignantly from his seat is ragequitting. "What the hell! How are you doing this?" A few crowd members back away to make room for his outburst. "You- you have to be cheating somehow!"
Contrary to the man losing his cool, the teal-haired girl opposite him is calm.
Faced with the pressure of the staring crowd, the man gives her a resentful look and then chucks his last token into the box, making a clattering sound, before he storms off. The crowd jeers.
<Pose Tracker> Leon Sakaki has posed.
As Leon walks into the arcade, what does he see except one of those simulators. Leon's never liked them - sure, the civilians eat them up, but they've never really captured the true feeling of flying.
Leon's expression changes from disinterest to pure shock as he sees the person at the controls of said arcade machine, though.
"You!" he shouts, pointing. "What are you doing here?"
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
Maybe it doesn't capture the rush of pressure as G-forces press you into your seat, or the feeling of actually moving, but this is the best you can get in an arcade without actually flying, so here Aurora is.
The crowd parts for Leon. His shout gets her attention, and her head turns to face him with a blank look. "I'm visiting the arcade," she says, still sitting in her seat, resting a hand on the controls.
<Pose Tracker> Leon Sakaki has posed.
Leon is flabbergasted at Aurora's nonchalant response, but just before he starts berating her, he catches himself. Aisha wanted to do some digging into that idol Lilium, didn't she? And Aurora was with her, so-
"I suppose you are. Fancy a match?" He takes a seat at the opposite arcade chair, doing his best "flyboy face".
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
Aurora nods and makes an acknowledging noise as her other hand returns to the controls, and the onlookers watch as the game begins.
How 'in-date' any given VF is in this particular game doesn't really matter. The stats are all relative to the era. Aurora chooses a Sturmvogel.
The first stage is effectively competitive shooting. Dozens of a variety of enemies descend, and the two players compete to destroy as many as they can within a time limit. The start counter reaches zero... and Aurora's hands twitch to life, moving quickly and sharply, fingers twitching on buttons. Aside from her eyes moving from side to side, tracking targets, the rush of activity isn't reflected on her face. Leon might be able to tell that she's focused on the match ahead of her, though.
Aurora blasts towards a series of Regults, launching a series of missiles towards them while firing her laser guns before transforming straight to battroid mode, riddling a Glaug with bullets at nearly point blank, and then switching back to high speed fighter mode and rapidly accelerating to dodge the incoming counter-fire in a dizzying high-G maneuveur.
She almost never uses Gerwalk mode for anything, favouring hit and run fighter attacks mixed with Battroid skirmishing. Textbook Gaplant, really. Her transformations tend to play fast and loose with what counts as "too close" too enemies (because she's used to having a melee weapon, which isn't common for variable fighters).
<Pose Tracker> Leon Sakaki has posed.
Leon flicks through the selection screen and selects a VF-19 in a flashy blue. What can he say? It's his role model.
When the buzzer blares, Leon full-throttles in Fighter, painting a line of Regults with missile locks accompanied by an unrealistic, but admittedly ear-pleasing beeping. With precision, he blasts straight through the line of enemies, gunpod blazing away to take out the center of the pack while the others are vaporized by his missiles.
He primarily sticks to fighter mode, only transforming to Gerwalk to perform a quick-cut turn, a trick that gets you yelled at in real life by your mechanic, but one that's perfect for the simulators.
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
VF-19. The Rhongomyniad's ancestor. The VF-23 isn't quite ready to go yet, but when it is, Aurora supposes she'll probably be flying it. Better get used to variable fighters again.
She's not doing too badly herself in her simulated green and blue Sturmvogel. (These colours are, in their own way, a... not quite role model thing. Hometown here?
Aurora watches Leon play. He's damn good. The gerwalk trick is a nice one. She doesn't have a movable booster or anything, but maybe... Aurora peels away from the missiles she's just launched at a small Glaug squad to rush down a Queadluun group, flying through and past them before turning for another pass, firing beam guns as she flies. Two Queadluuns explode, and she manages to get behind another in Battroid mode, pressing her gunbarrel to its back and blasting without mercy.
The buzzer sounds. A satisfied Aurora looks at her score. 97%. It's probably good enough.
The next round is a VS match. Aurora changes to the Nightmare. It's what she's used to. Special operations machines and all that. She sits and waits calmly for the buzzer...
<Pose Tracker> Leon Sakaki has posed.
Leon changes to Battroid and starts laying into the Queadlunns, blasting missiles out of the sky with his head laser, refusing to let off the trigger - he takes a few shots though, and doesn't manage to block in time, leading him to completely smash the last Queadlunn's cockpit in with a Pinpoint Barrier Punch.
When the round ends, Leon gets an 89 score - not amazing, but not a failing grade either. He whistles at Aurora's insane percentage.
"Deeeculture. Where'd you learn how to fly that well?"
In the selection screen for the next round, Leon picks a green VF-9 Cutlass. It's an underrated favorite of his. His fingers tense on the control sticks as he takes a breath to steady himself.
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
With scores like Aurora gets, it's no wonder she was clearing people out. She didn't even start the wagering, apparently people just do that when an exciting opponent swings by here. She glances at her box of spoils. There's definitely something satisfying about this...
Aurora turns to look at Leon. "You like my flying?"
She turns back to look at the match. Her grip on the controls tightens, and her eyes focus on the screen.
BZZT
And they're off! Starting in fighter mode, Aurora locks onto Leon and paints him with missile target indicators before sending a swarm of missiles his way. Then, she twists out of the way of where she assumes his return fire will come from before changing to Battroid mode to blast away with her gunpod and shoot down his missiles, which, again, she assumes he's going to use.
Aurora's one on one strategy is to switch between battroid and fighter for hit and run attacks while trying to keep missiles on Leon at all times. She still doesn't really use Gerwalk, but she's picked up a new trick for this match: putting debris inbetween her and Leon to break line of sight before coming out of unexpected angles. At one point, she ambushes him in Battroid mode from behind an asteroid, like a soldier peeking out from a trench.
<Pose Tracker> Leon Sakaki has posed.
"Your flying's amazing, You exmil or something?" Leon asks. Leon knows how to sound casual - he's gotten really good at it, even. So his subtle probing for information isn't super noticeable.
As the match begins, Leon takes aim at the missiles and blasts away with the Cutlass's gunpod and shoulder-mounted interception turret - a unique feature of the design that must be incredibly hard to wrangle in real combat, but in a simulated environment designed for player-friendliness works just about as well as a standard head turret. He launches a few missiles, but mainly just slips into Fighter mode and chases down Aurora.
As she pops out of cover spots, Leon changes to Gerwalk and loops around the asteroids, rotating on them like they have planetary gravity to swing around and fire back at her.
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
"No. Not ex," she clarifies. "Current military." It'd be a little weird for a teenager to be exmil already, wouldn't it? Aurora wouldn't really be able to tell that she's giving a weird answer, though. Her peers are frequently the same age as her, so an 18 year old pilot doesn't scan as a red flag to her. Leon's probing is dismissed as the casual questioning it appears to be.
If Leon asks which outfit, she tells him "NUNE military".
Aurora responds to being chased down by alternating between turning around and flying straight at Leon, trying aerial maneuveurs to reverse their positions and more of her sneak attack shenanigans.
Leon loops around the asteroids to find Aurora sitting in Gerwalk mode waiting to unload on him with a swarm of missiles and gunfire. She makes no apologies for interrupting the blaring sound of Ranka's singing coming over the speakers with missile warning tones.
<Pose Tracker> Leon Sakaki has posed.
"NUNE? I see" Leon files that one away for later.
Leon's flying is fancy, but Aurora's is all skill. As he completes his little loop maneuver, he finds Aurora sitting waiting for him with full missile lock.
"Oh, son of a. . ."
[GAME OVER] the screen reads, and Leon throws his hands up in defeat.
"Well, you've bested me. You really do know what you're doing. And at this young? You must be an ace or something."
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
"What about you? SMS, right? You were flying with them after the concert."
The match ends, and the machine dispenses tokens. If Leon wants to continue the conversation without a rematch, Aurora will get up and let other people use the machine.
Aurora nods. "Thanks. I've had a lot of practice. I don't really have an ace colour scheme or anything, but I've been in various groups." Aurora is content to leave that to the imagination unless he asks specific questions. "I usually pilot mobile suits."
"You're pretty good too. You have a unique paint job, right?"
[OOC] Aurora Dusk says, "bluray: "I say military. I go between Earth and Space. I can fly fine enough in any environment. Any terrain is fine."" (EDITOR'S NOTE: I have **no damn clue** what I meant when I typed this and I still can't figure it out) <Pose Tracker> Leon Sakaki has posed.
"Yeah, I" Leon stands up from the machine to move elsewhere. He's not really supposed to talk about being in the S.M.S. with others, but the secret's already out, so . . .
The two move away to get some space. "I'm a test pilot, yes," Leon finishes.
"Various groups, huh? Anything I would know?" Leon keeps a subtle application of questioning, before returning to casual conversation. "They're not really my colors," he says, wobbling his hand back and forth to indicate uncertainty. "They're more to say that I'm a tester. They're really sweet though, right?"
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
Aurora follows Leon to a quieter corner. This conversation probably wouldn't be a good one to have in front of that crowd. Her blue eyes study Leon, as she tries to guess what he's like as a soldier. He doesn't look overly burly, but looks can be deceiving... She doesn't look very tough either. "Test... So that Variable Fighter is a prototype?" There's something twinkling in her eye. "..."I pilot prototypes too, sometimes," she says.
She doesn't really have a rule against telling people about the force she works for. She's not supposed to tell anyone about Phantom Pain or advertise that she comes from a laboratory, and it goes against the professional ethics of special forces to be loose with that either, but he's already asked. She weighs how much to tell him, habitually looking around her before she responds. "Well... I was in G-Hound," she says, pausing slightly before she continues a little quieter. "All terrain special forces. 'Earth, Colony, Asteroid,'" she repeats like a motto. "Currently, I'm a Gaia Saber, but they absorbed almost all of the armed forces, so that isn't really special."
'Sweet colours.' "Yeah." Aurora nods.
<Pose Tracker> Leon Sakaki has posed.
Leon sizes Aurora up more carefully in return. God, she looks so young. He was that young when he enlisted in the military, but that was because he was on a smaller population colony world - he thought the Earth Sphere didn't need those kinds of measures. And prototypes, too? Leon's chest aches a little. This is why he left the military.
"Uh-huh, uh-huh" Leon nods along - he doesn't know most of these organization names. The mention of the Gaia Sabers makes him quirk an eyebrow.
"I suppose that makes sense." Leon changes the subject.
"Uhhh, what was your friend's name? At the concert. She seemed nice."
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
Leon's reaction is understandable. Aurora has the youthful look of someone who is legally an adult, but still counts as a child to anyone old enough to know the difference between a teenager and a grown woman. Beyond that, her voice is soft, and she projects the kind of distant introversion-bordering-on-dissociation that's easy to mistake for shyness, if someone were expecting that kind of person.
Now, Aurora isn't supposed to be too loose with Lilium, either, but Leon already met her. Lilium isn't here to give her an alias to use, either. "Lilium."
"...Did you do anything before SMS?"
<Pose Tracker> Leon Sakaki has posed.
"Lilium I'll remember that." That confirms their suspicions. What Leon's going to do with that . . . he doesn't know.
"I was in the EFF on Sephira." Leon's tone of voice goes as flat as a board when he says that. The sound of bulkhead doors slamming shut around his heart is almost audible.
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
Aurora wonders to herself if Leon realises that Lilium is Lilium the idol. She was wearing a disguise, after all... and since Leon didn't bring it up, she decides to leave the topic alone.
Being a Newtype, even the kind Aurora is, has its telepathic perks. The sound of bulkhead doors slamming shut around his heart IS audible. It doesn't take someone with any emotional intelligence at all to realise the significance Sephira has to him, even if they don't know what happened there. Aurora nods. Something in her eyes looks... sympathetic. Call it the sympathy of someone else who has known a certain kind of pain.
"You were in the EFF before SMS?" Aurora knows that a lot of former soldiers wind up as mercenaries, or security guards, or private test pilots. She's met a few. They're usually the 'soldier of fortune' type, in her experience.
<Pose Tracker> Leon Sakaki has posed.
Leon averts his gaze from Aurora's too-knowing stare. Those eyes seem to bore right into him, through his walls and defenses and right into his soul.
"I don't want to talk about it." It's not worth opening up to anyone else about this. Especially not someone in the military. This was supposed to be Leon asking Aurora questions - when the hell did this become about his personal issues?
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
Leon's eyes shift away, and Aurora's do too. She knows that feeling, too. Prying eyes, appraising... she doesn't mean to stare into his soul, but her senses don't have an off switch, and her eyes tend to sparkle cryptically like that.
Aurora nods quietly. If he doesn't want to talk about it, she won't pry. She knows that much tact, at least. There are things she doesn't really talk about with strangers, either, even setting aside her own issues with opening up to people.
She stands still, not saying anything. Her eyes have settled on something near enough to Leon that she isn't looking completely away, but enough that she isn't staring directly at him. At times like this, she finds she doesn't really know what to say.
"...do you come here often?"
<Pose Tracker> Leon Sakaki has posed.
Leon stands there awkwardly, his bluntness slowly fading out into just an uncomfortable silence. He breathes a sigh of relief when Aurora brings up something new.
"Not too often. It's kind of a hassle to get all the way down here." He might come here more often, if he wasn't considering leaving the Frontier altogether. Leon takes another look at Aurora. She's a representation of all the forces in the world he hates, and yet- he feels like he cares about her.
Leon sighs, and makes a decision. He's going to defect with the rest of the Quarter crew. It's the only way he can think of to make a world where kids like Aurora won't be soldiers anymore.
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
"Mm. I'm busy a lot of the time, and I travel a lot..." Anything more than that is probably giving away too much of her duties. She's not JUST here as a tourist, after all. Hanging out at the arcade is intelligence gathering! Milia did that too, and Milia was a confident, powerful soldier. "But when I do get the time, I like to do things like this."
Aurora looks back at Leon. Is there something soft in the eyes that return his look? She doesn't really know what to make of the feeling she gets from him. For a second, she feels like he might be a nice person.
<Pose Tracker> Leon Sakaki has posed.
"Yeah, I get traveling a lot. It's nice to have a break every once in a while. Aisha's always working me like a dog. I'm not her errand boy!"
Leon's greenish-blues are filled with an overlap of emotions - care, warmth, and sadness. It's the expression of remembering a lost loved one.
Leon checks his watch. "Oh, I should probably get going. They're gonna want me soon."
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
Aurora gets worked like a dog too. The life of a hound of the newtype institute is full of graft and a little bit too empty of pay.
Aurora's own blue eyes... is that a touch of blue-lavender? have their own nostalgic, melancholic shine to them. He really does seem nice, doesn't he?
"Mm." She nods. "Take care."
As she watches his departing form, Aurora looks at the floor and wonders about him. There's a familiar sensation about him, but she can't really place it.