2025-06-14: Headache
- Log: 2025-06-14- Headache
- Cast: Akane Shinjo, Aurora Dusk
- Where: Heaven's Base
- OOC - IC Date: 0100-06-14
- Summary: After another round of kaiju extraction, Akane gets escorted to her room.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
For the second time since her arrival at Heaven's Base, Akane -- at the request of Gaia Sabers upper management -- has had a decently lengthy sit in a machine attached to the Alter Gatcher. She is a rare human at this point -- even after Fixer Beam, there's something about her that isn't quite baseline, and that 'something' can be extracted.
It's physical, tangible; it's a less efficient and altogether weaker means of creating kaiju than having her do it, but since she stubbornly refuses to do it, she will be placed in situations where it happens anyway and hurts.
Akane is not a fan of the Alter Gatcher. It's the act of creating monsters at its most soulless -- and even though she no longer does it, she retains an aesthetic sense of kaiju creation. Even participating in this upsets her -- though what she does can hardly be said to be 'participation,' any more than having one's blood drawn is.
It is getting harder as it goes. The first extraction process was relatively easy; the second has been rather more forceful. What was a light, ignorable headache the first time is now a throbbing migraine -- and with virtually no results, besides. Nothing new, at any rate, and the limit of what they can get in a single sitting seems to have been reached. At best, they might be able to distill a pearl from her extracted essence.
Akane... needs help getting back to her quarters. (And make no mistake, they are quarters -- she's being treated like personnel.) All the personnel assigned to oversee the process have left, and stuck her waiting in a containment airlock between the room which now holds the Gatcher and the rest of the base. Someone, she is told, will be there to walk her back.
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
The containment airlock's other door opens, revealing Akane's escort. That someone, as it turns out, is one of the lab's denizens - a uniformed Cyber-Newtype who was free at the time. Judging by the rank tabs, a Second Lieutenant.
Judging by the everything else, it's Aurora.
Aurora is a resident of this lab, sometimes, when she's not actively deployed - she returns here both to participate in testing (of machines and other products) and for the periodic medical examinations inevitable to her condition. She happens to be present at the lab right now, and being idle at this exact moment meant she was free to help Akane, as opposed to any of the personnel actually responsible for her condition, who surely have better things to do than actually escort her back.
After the door hisses open, Aurora shifts to the side slightly... before seeing Akane is in no condition to walk herself back and stepping in herself instead. Her eyebrows raise slightly when she sees her, but she doesn't say anything yet. A reaction to her condition? Does she recognise Akane?
Does Akane recognise her?
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
It takes Akane a few seconds to fully orient on Aurora; she manages to stop leaning against the wall, at least, and brings her hand up to her face to pinch the bridge of her nose. She'll get herself oriented again. It might take a second or two.
She does at least form up with Aurora in short order -- having to brace herself slightly against her to really fully stabilize. It's only after that that she gets a particularly good, oriented look at the Cyber-Newtype's face -- and she looks legitimately surprised.
"... You?" she asks, slightly incredulous. It gets her a good bit more awake, at least. "Why are you here? Did you tell the Gaia Sabers about that spa thing too, or something?" ... No, she's too high-ranked for that to be the explanation, she realizes.
That prompts a little more thought. "Or... huh. Were you working here beforehand?" That squares a little better -- but it's bewildering in its own way.
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
Aurora lets Akane orient and stabilise herself on her own, but once she does, she silently makes herself available to lean on if necessary. She's absolutely been there herself. Still is, sometimes; the migraines are a fact of life, and Aurora recognises the slight commonality.
That's not all she recognises. This is someone she's met before. The surprise at this meeting is mutual; Aurora only received the most cursory explanation of what she was doing.
Akane vocalises the Spa Thing before she does, alongside a few guesses. The second one happens to be correct. Aurora nods her head and reintroduces herself. "Yeah. Second Lieutenant Aurora Dusk, of the Experimental Weapons Division."
"...You're 'The Queen of Monsters'? Can you walk back on your own, or do you need support?"
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Akane stares dumbly for a few moments. Experimental Weapons Division -- that's a euphemism, she thinks, given where they are and what she's been made party to. She wonders for a bit if Aurora is someone who, in this context, acts or is acted upon.
She'll doubtless learn that eventually, but she can take her time with it. Or offer a guess. She'll attend to her most immediate needs first, though. "... Yeah," she says, a little lamely. "Or at least, I was." It's not like she identifies with that label -- but it's hard to say she isn't when she knows what's being asked.
"I could use a little help," Akane says -- and being able to ask for it here shows how far she's come in her ability to avoid looking gift horses in the mouth, even when maybe she ought to. "Which project are you part of?" comes a follow-up question as she starts moving, a little shakily. "Boosted Songstress support? Cyber-Newtype?" She could offer more guesses, but elects not to.
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
It's a euphemism, and Aurora is fully aware of that, but they do also use actual experimental weapons there. Actual weapons, not person-weapons.
Aurora responds to Akane's need by making herself available to lean on as they walk, and to her question with "I'm a Cyber-Newtype. From Augusta, specifically. I do fly support for Angel's Orchard sometimes, though."
As they move, Aurora tries to account for Akane's shakiness. Her support is firm, like you'd expect from a soldier. Not too rough, though. She DOES have experience supporting people coming out of procedures shaky. As they walk down the sterile halls, Aurora continues talking, in her quiet voice. "...I do a lot of things for a lot of divisions." As evidenced by her pounding ground on the Saistone investigation. "I didn't expect to see you here, though. GGG Red, right?"
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
A Cyber-Newtype... Akane doesn't want to draw conclusions immediately. She knows that people request enhancement for their own reasons, too. But she can't shake the stereotype; seeing New Desides-related trials as a youngster has some effects on you.
Akane's pleased to have any support. She rubs at her face again, trying to get her head back together; she's worn down to say the least. "Yeah, that's right. ... I'm not here by choice." Akane looks down and to the side, a hint of... embarrassment seeping in. On some level, getting caught on an operation is embarrassing; getting exploited like this is... downright humiliating, honestly. She thought that she was better than this.
Better than this twice, at the very least.
"I want to go home, but I know they're not going to let me." Akane has no faith in the implication that she might get to go home eventually; if she goes home, it's because 3G takes her home, and she knows it.
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
In this case, the stereotype happens to be mostly accurate. Aurora doesn't bring it up, though. "Migraine?" She ventures a guess. "Do they give you pills for that yet?"
Aurora registers the embarassment, and while she can't really relate it to her own living conditions, which she's lived under for as long as she can remember, she does grasp the theory. She's seen people come back from being POWs with a burning need to avenge that humiliation, and she would probably feel that way too.
"...Probably not." Aurora's manner here is lacking. It's not something she can first-order empathise with, not having a home outside the labs and all. She decides to change the subject slightly. "During the border incident? With the HADES-equipped Nu, and the Vist breakaways."
Aurora leads them down a corridor, and then realises her briefing has a crucial omission. "...Wait, which way was your room again?"
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"No," Akane says, with the sulky resignation of her teenage self. "I don't think they're gonna. At least not yet."
Squeezing blood from a stone is of course the less agreeable option, compared to having her making kaiju in earnest. (She doesn't have kaiju seeds at the moment, but that no doubt is something that can be handled. Or replaced.) If having blood squeezed from her is painful, she might eventually crack.
... Easier topics to talk about present themselves, at least. Functional ones first. "... It's to the right from here I think. I'm rooming with Cherub-2." That might help.
Finally, she addresses the border incident. "Yeah, that was it," she says, a little lamely. "Your guys were in the same building I was... I went around a blind corner and ran straight into them." Looking down, she adds, "A Gustav Karl fell into the building basically right then... I was going to shoot and then run, but my aim was way off."
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
Aurora perks up at the mention of Cherub-2, and turns right with Akane. "Always corner correctly." She nods. "I had that drilled into me early. Wait, they would've been responding to the same incident as you..."
Aurora looks at Akane curiously. "What do you do for GGG, anyway?"
She's already familiar with a lot of the complex, and she knows where the Cherubs bunk anyway, so finding where Akane needs to go isn't too hard. Aurora continues supporting her through the halls, walking past a window overlooking a field. A Gustav Karl stands guard outside, and in the distance a Windam can be seen flying over the ice.
"Oh, speaking of. After the spa incident, did you find anything else out about the Vist guys? I remember we snooped around a little more before the border incident. They were on our side of the border too." Professional curiosity from someone who was working the same case, basically. To different ends, to be fair, but it was the same perpetrators and the same general area.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"I'm the special assistant to Chief Takarada," Akane answers. She knows that this is probably falsifiable with her actual title among personnel who are read in on this sort of thing, but she's been told not to give up any information she can avoid giving up, and that's her public title. "I... also do Career Day for the local high schools and middle schools."
That part is true.
Akane looks out the window. Ice. That's worth remembering. She also has the knowledge, at this point, that there is a lot of daylight, and that the average accent is Britannian; that significantly lowers the range of possibilities for where she is.
... They're bad possibilities, but knowing is better than not.
"We managed to find a list of related shell companies, but that's about it," Akane answers. "They might have been putting feelers out with BioNet before this, too, but I didn't get to follow up on that and I don't have any of that stuff memorized."
She's starting to bounce back, at least. She's still tired, but even so, she feels better than she did a few minutes ago.
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
"...I've never been to a school career day. I don't think they invite ECOAS to those, though." Aurora's information is half-right! While they don't invite specfor troopers to middle school career days, a lot of schools under the Federation let military recruiters come in. They wouldn't have used people like her for that, though.
Besides, children generally don't volunteer to go down her career path, loosest interpretations of volunteer aside.
Aurora DOES, however, wonder what going to one would look like. "What's career day like?" Talking to children about their jobs? What would Aurora say? She shoots insurgents and they die?
Aurora adds her own side of the story. "We found the person who owned the building. The one on our side of the border, I mean. He talked." 'He talked' is the kind of extremely short, extremely nondescript phrase that does a lot of heavy lifting in sentences like this.
Overhead, the lights are buzzing. Florescent lighting, the bane of the sensorially... sensitive everywhere. A questionable choice for a lab complex full of sensitive people, especially the kind prone to headaches.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"Well -- I mean, it's pretty basic. I usually cover the part about civil defense. Whoever I'm working with that day handles explaining our relationship with other organizations, like the police," Akane says. "That's for group stuff. I've had to go to schools and sit at booths and answer questions, too, though usually that's someone else's job." Akane feels... a little more normal when she talks about this part. ... She kind of misses it, right now, even if under normal circumstances those weeks would make her feel kind of overdrawn.
"Oh, did you guys just squeeze someone?" Akane asks, though she can't say she's particularly surprised. She knows that the Gaia Sabers share a lineage with G-Hound, the worse of the two Federation organizations with similar mandates. "We were a little less direct..."
They get to a slightly worse part of the lab complex when it comes to the lighting, and Akane finds herself leaning on Aurora a bit whether she likes it or not. "... Eeuughhh, how do you guys stand that," she asks, with a gesture up to the lights.
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
Aurora listens closely to the explanation of Career Day. "I wonder what a Newtype Corps career day would be like..."
"Yeah. He refused to talk at first. So we threatened him and he talked after that." This is entirely normal for someone who was part of that G-Hound lineage. "We knew he was taking money from a criminal organisation that we were chasing, and we knew he was hiding it."
"...The lighting in this hallway sucks. I usually just avoid it..." Aurora looks away. She isn't really enjoying the florescence either. Eventually, though, they do get past it and arrive at Cherub-2's room. "This is it, right?"
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
The idea of a Newtype Corps career day leaves Akane aghast; she can't quite hide the reflexive horror, at this point. She's... seen some stuff. She says, "... I don't think this is the kinda thing that they let into career day," with a shake of her head, and elects to leave it at that.
She listens. It's... inelegant. It's not that 3G doesn't have its own heavies -- certainly it does, and they certainly lean on their investigation subjects, but... the point-blank 'we solved this problem with threats' involved here is a whole different style and one she can't say she's very fond of. She's glad that the meat of her work is with signals or victims and not hitting the field. ... Field work got her here, after all. "I guess it got you early warning on everything that happened," Akane says, a little lamely.
She lets the lighting subject drop in favor of arriving at Cherub-2's room. "Yeah, this is the place," Akane says. She swipes her... 'guest pass,' to put it delicately, and lets herself in. Cherub-2 is not here for the moment, at least.
"I don't mind if you wanna come in," Akane offers, with a small shrug.
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
Aurora's face doesn't really shift from Akane's horror. "...maybe it would be nice to go to a regular career day. My job is classified, though..." she muses, as she taps her lower jaw.
"It's not like we knew the border attack was coming, but we had an idea what they were up to. Maybe that's part of why they surrendered. Even if they ran, we were working our way up their supply chain." Left unstated is the reasoning behind which side of the border they surrendered to.
Aurora's face lights up. "Oh, have you met them yet? I got to put E-1 through the training course. We have an assault course and a cardboard house."
When given the offer to come in, Aurora nods, and enters slightly awkwardly. This is Akane's room, but she's bunking with Cherub-2, so it's like entering Cherub-2's room with only vague permission...
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"I mean, parts of mine are, too. When I'm talking to most people I introduce myself as special assistant to the Chief," Akane says. ... She wonders, vaguely, what it'll be like if that, too, changes. If they hurt Rikka again --
-- she'll just make sure that doesn't happen. Rikka and Alouette will find a way out. They're being housed separately from her but that doesn't mean that she can't trust in their courage.
She snaps back to the present moment as E-1 is mentioned. "We, uh... like, our eyes met? But that woman who was with her took her away pretty fast." Akane feels like she ought to remember that girl's name. She's seen her driver's license photo before -- one of the 40 or so serious candidates they were looking for in assessing the possible people taken by that group. She thinks it would have started with H in English, and the 'hi' for sun in Japanese... Hime? Hina?
... She'd need to feel better than she presently does to get there. Akane flops onto the bed, saying, "Don't touch anything. I agreed I wouldn't mess with anything that looks important," Akane warns, before getting back to it. "I heard that woman mention a couple guy names too, but I didn't see either of them yet..."
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
Aurora takes a seat nearby Akane. "Maybe you'll see her again."
She nods. She wasn't planning on messing with the... shrine? on the desk. Even Aurora knows things like that are off limits.
"Oh, I got to meet all three of them." Should Aurora be mouthing off about this? Akane isn't here of her own free will, but she has an assistant position...
As she sits, something in her pocket shifts. It's a... book?
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"Yeah, maybe. I'd kinda like to get the chance to talk to her," Akane admits, with a small nod to herself. Maybe the two of them can be each other's lifeline out, she thinks -- certainly it'd be better than trying to do this alone. (She doesn't think she can reach Aurora on the kind of time scale she needs to. She has a wedding to get to!)
She makes a mental note of Aurora meeting all three of them, and casually asks, "What's your first impression? Just, like, as people."
She pauses, noticing the shift in Aurora's pocket. Squinting just a little, she tries to get a sense of what that could have been. Her position shifts a little on the bed, and she looks at it a little closer... "What's the book?" Cyber-Newtype reading material is something she's curious about.
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
"You're working with Dr. Ashton, right? Maybe if you get put on the HADES project..." Aurora doesn't notice any ulterior motices here. "I could try introducing you if you both have spare time..." It depends on how hard E-1 is getting put through her paces.
On the topic of E-1's name, Aurora would remember 'Hina' being used, but she's not totally sure that is her name. More importantly, she introduced herself as E-1, and that's what everyone calls her.
"My first impression?" She thinks back. "Let's see... there's Dr. Sumino. She's from the Murasame lab. She sounds..." Aurora thinks for a little bit again. "Like she's trying to sound nice. Landry doesn't bother. He worked on mobile weapons development at Augusta, I remember when we asked E-1 how she was doing, she started talking about her role here and Landry cut her off and redirected her. Direct and blunt. He sure talks to people like a mechanic... They brought an instructor, too. Amun. He's the zeek. You'll be able to tell as soon as he opens his mouth. ...he doesn't talk to us much. He was at Loum." Aurora answers this last part a little more clipped than she does the others.
Aurora has her own question for Akane. "I've seen a file on you before, actually. It was a while back." She stares at her conversational partner's hair. "Your hair's changed," she obseves.
Aurora turns to Akane, then looks down at her pocket. When she pulls the book out, the Cyber-Newtype reading material is revealed to be...
A doujin. A Truthseeker Serena doujin, in fact. "Oh, this? I got it a while back. It's a Serena doujin."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
... That's a pretty good offer. Akane doesn't hesitate to say, "I could ask about that, yeah... it'd be nice to have another project going." That much is even true, at a certain level of abstraction; she would benefit greatly from having access to a second project.
Akane is briefly surprised to hear 'zeek' used; she really shouldn't be, given where she is, but it's a comment that gets her to pause. (She heard it in her household, too, before her parents separated, but that's neither here nor there.) That doesn't stop her from listening, though. It fills in some mental gaps, but she'll need to get access to them to really nail things down.
"Yeah... I've had it both lilac and really dark brown. And black, I guess, but that was only really in middle school."
Doujin talk is easier. And when she actually sees it...
Blinking, she says, "That, uh. That's ours... we did Comiket in 0099."
She's really curious -- and pleasantly surprised to be making her way around the secondary market! "What did you think of it?" she asks, eager. "I didn't realize you were a Serena fan..."
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
"...Oh, that explains it." Yeah. She felt like dyeing her hair. That's about the size of what Aurora can read from this.
Aurora blinks. "You wrote it?" She brings the doujin up and checks the author's credits. Lo and behold, NewOrderAkane. Akane Shinjo. Go figure. "...Yeah, I watched it when I was younger." It's probably not that surprising. Newtype lab denizens are starved for art centering them as characters; usually shows either brush over the core issues or relegate them to side characters. Or tragic love interests that live to suffer and die and jerk tears. "It's got a nice mix of action and investigation..." sort of like Aurora's job, when she's on foot.
"I liked it. The investigation was fun to read, and Cecilia got to be the spotlight character..." Aurora's eyes sparkle slightly. "I wish the fight was longer, though. It felt like an episode of the show..."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Akane elects not to press the issue. It's more bearable this way; on some level she finds it embarrassing that she feels the need to engage through what she thinks is a less sincere, better-protected version of herself.
"Yeah, Rikka and I did a lot of the parts of it. She's honestly kind of a genius... I can set the rough plot but she can really get into the heads of the cast." With a little smirk, she adds, "The jokes are usually mine, though." She certainly likes to think she's funny. "And yeah -- I wanted the energy to feel right..." Part of her is self-conscious that she can't get anywhere without standing on the strength of an existing story, but she can suppress that feeling. ... Somewhat, anyway. It's nice to get praised for it though.
"I keep finding new stuff to like about every character. Rikka and I haven't rewatched all the way through in a bit, but sometimes we'll throw on an episode again?" Here, she stares up at the ceiling. She wishes she were doing that right now, actually. "Lately I kinda want to know more about Antheia... Rikka picked up something really neat about her word choice last time we watched, but I can't remember what..."
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
Aurora listens to Akane's description of her creative process with Rikka. She didn't expect to meet the author of that doujin today, but that's probably on her for not connecting the dots. Sounds like Akane and Rikka work together as a team well...
Word choice... Antheia's word choice... Aurora thinks. There's no way she can guess what Rikka picked up on, but she can offer something from her own observations anyway. "...A lot of the time, when she praises Cecilia, she includes a comment that makes it sound less... less..." Aurora takes a little while to find the word she wants. "...makes it sound like she's disappointed anyway, somehow?" Good enough. "It must be hard for Cecilia," she muses. "She tries her best to do her job right and make Antheia proud and live up to her expectations."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Akane looks at Aurora with genuine surprise as she starts talking about Antheia; she thinks the first half might have been something she discussed with Rikka at some point, but... she's struggling in a big way, at this point. It's hard to maintain this look, especially when she's not doing it deliberately, and especially when there's no monster she's raising in her heart.
(But then -- maybe she is, again.)
"Hmm... yeah, I see that. To tell you the truth, I wanna write some stuff with her in it again... I've only done a little, and only a few people have seen any of that." Writing isn't the skill Akane is particularly proud of... though maybe it's worth doing while she's here? It could be a nice, low-tech way to keep herself occupied... it sounds like she might even have a beta reader.
"You're totally right, though! It's a really good way of showing that that whole group isn't very unified?" Mulling that over, she adds, "What do you think of the relationship between Serena and Cecilia, though...?"
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
Talking about Serena like this is dredging up some of Aurora's own takeaways from that show. Being in the demographic she is, some of her takes are a little... idiosyncratic. If she had to pick a favourite character, she'd probably pick Cecilia. She sees a lot of herself in her, even if they're not that similar on the surface. Early season Cecilia, anyways.
"I think they get on because they have the shared experience they do." Objectively, it's not a very common experience to share with the people you meet on the street, but here, most people Aurora's age share it. "Even if Serena doesn't remember, she finds out she has more in common with Cecilia than she thinks at first. Sort of like meeting a sister you didn't know you had..."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Shared experience... that's something that makes a lot of sense to Akane as a thing to focus on. It's natural for it to land for Aurora, too. She absently shifts a little in the bed; her hands reach up, snagging a pillow. She embraces it -- just to have something to fidget with, really.
"A sister, huh..." Akane turns that one over out loud. "Uh -- you get that they're, like, together together, right?" A beat passes, before she adds, "Though I heard the common interpretation in Britannia is kinda different so I guess maybe that makes sense too..."
Pushing her hair out of her eyes, Akane adds, "I kinda see a lot of myself in Serena, I guess? Like -- everyone in the show is someone who gets bored really fast, and that's... pretty familiar. I definitely need more stimulation than I'm getting here..." She sighs, admitting, "... At some point I stopped being used to being alone."
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
Aurora might or might not show it (this depends on who's looking and how long they look), but she's the type of person who would really love more peers. She leans back slightly, fidgeting with her fingers.
A beat passes. "...I think it's a dub difference? It makes sense now that I think about it." The analogy still sort of holds for Aurora. Besides, 'sister' is where her mind goes before 'girlfriend' when the topic of 'meeting someone who somehow has the same background as you' comes up. Consider her previous relationship experience... though recently, her interpretations here might be starting to change.
"...Cecilia is... I think I understand some of her... where she's coming from," she adds quietly. "It's a bit hard to get used to being alone when you grow up living in a room with a lot of other people..." As soon as she says that, she realises that's not quite true. "But that's not always like being friends with people."
"On the other hand, I get a lot of stimulation from my job. I'm very busy with a lot of different kinds of work. ...if you're feeling bored, we can go see if the Cherubs want to play a game later. I think we have a few in the lounge? I could probably grab a board game next time I have leave somewhere."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Akane looks to Aurora with a small frown crossing her face, as she lets cultural differences fall away for the meat of Aurora's relationship with the show. "You can be alone pretty much anywhere," she says, looking off to the side. "Sometimes it's kinda easier to feel alone in a place like that. Like... you look at everyone else and go, 'they're having such a good time with this. Why am I the only one who isn't?'" Nodding, she affirms, "It's definitely different to have friends."
'Stimulation from my job,' though. That's something Akane wants to tug at but probably shouldn't. Not yet. Right now, insofar as she's considering Aurora a potential victim of science crime, this is the building-rapport stage; she shouldn't press her luck and try to rush.
"Board games with the Cherubs, huh..." Akane nods. "That sounds kinda good." She shifts her grip on the pillow. "Man. It's kinda crazy to see a copy of that, though..." Things always reach a little further than you expect...
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
Aurora is no stranger to the feeling of being alone in a crowd. Plainclothes operations are like that. You can walk past a million people in one day and feel like none of them are actually there with you in a meaningful sense. Like they melt into the scenery. 'Crowd' is just another terrain condition, like 'snow' or 'rough ground'. Even in a building filled with 'peers', it doesn't mean much if you don't really talk to them on a daily basis. You inhabit the same building, day after day, but you don't manage to connect that deeply with most of them. Aurora renders this complex chain of thoughts as a look off into the distance followed by a "yeah" in response to Akane.
"I get that feeling. Like there's a barrier between me and everybody I see on the street. They've got their own business, and it doesn't intersect with mine at all. Usually, they're not even allowed to see it happen."
"...I think we have some board games lying around." Aurora cricks her neck. "Even I can afford some, if we don't have any. I could ask around about getting some..." How much do you think about the average person you pass on the street? Have you ever considered you've read something they wrote? When somebody writes a well-loved... well, anything, and then goes out for a walk on a busy street, how many people on that street do you think have read it, and are now passing the author without realising it?
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Somehow, the kindness -- even from seeming other subjects -- has Akane more off guard than she was on the Garuda. It was easier to be constantly under strain, actively working toward escape, always a little paranoid. This? Akane's almost had a chance to decompress during some of this stretch -- and that throws her, too. Aurora's affirmation that the feeling tracks, and then the mention of picking up board games if they don't have any...
... it's strange. At once something that bewilders her and relaxes her.
She settles into her bed for the moment, saying, "Yeah, that sounds good. Hey, do you mind if I get some rest? My head still hurts... it got a little easier once we started talking, but I still feel pretty crappy."
She rolls onto her side in her bed, murmuring, "Sorry... hey, uh..." She trails off, and settles for a slightly awkward, "Stay safe?"
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
For most people, being in these circumstances is something they would strive to endure before getting back to normal. For Aurora, this is her normal. She isn't under any exceptional strain. She lives her life and finds ways to kill time when she isn't on duty.
It's not strange at all for her. This is just another part of her work-rest cycle.
"...Sure. It happens." Headaches aren't unusual, either. The weird thing is not having a prescription for them. Aurora closes the door behind her, turning off the light before she goes. Thankfully, a normal light. Ashcroft would have murdered somebody if they tried putting florescent lights in the personal rooms.
"...You too."