2025-06-26: Wandering Warship Gefion
- Log: 06/26/25
- Cast: Leon Sakaki, Aurora Dusk, Joanna Strauss
- Where: Pacific Ocean
- IC Date: U.C. 00100 06 21
- Summary: Leon, Aisha, Aurora, and Joanna have a chat about VFs, terrorist attacks, and Leon's propensity for trouble, until a certain someone wakes up.
<Pose Tracker> Leon Sakaki has posed.
The day after the battle with the ZERO Assassin, the Gefion cruises over the Pacific Ocean lazily, with two additional passengers on board. Leon yawns as he walks into the cafeteria area, a coffee mug with "My Boyfriend is a Pilot" on it in his hand. As he walks in, he's startled to see Joanna and Aurora there before him, the mug jostling and splashing.
"Oh! Right- Hey, you guys. You sleep alright?" It's a bit awkward to have two enlisted soldiers from what are, ostensibly rival organizations on board, but Leon already knows one of them, and the SAL is a significantly less questionable organization than the Gaia Sabers.
Leon takes a seat at the table with Aurora and Joanna, sighing.
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
One of the pilots Leon arrives to find happens to be Aurora. She's sitting in the cafeteria, wearing an atmosphere-spec flight suit and poking at her food.
Aurora nods. "Yeah. I'm used to coming down after sorties. What about you? ...Long time no see." She has slept... well enough. She's used to crashing (in bed, not how Leon does) after sorties, anyway.
Uppers, downers or no.As for the fighter she came in on, it's currently sitting in the flight deck. It wasn't too badly damaged - this may have been a pretext on Aurora's part. It's probably fixed by now. It's probably also getting looked over, but the F-type is reasonably tamper-proof and not all that secret.
She looks at the fighter near her - the one from SAL. It's a little bit awkward having someone who's basically an enemy pilot this close, but it happens. Aurora has no real interest in starting a fight, especially not on board a third party's ship.
<Pose Tracker> Joanna Strauss has posed.
Joanna would have been primarily milling about the cafeteria with a coffee of her own, no fancy mug for her sadly; though the visual of a minmay mug did make her snort for a second - either Leon had what she considered good music taste, or someone had been very cheeky when giving it to him, if not quite direct about something else; regardless, she met poor ol' Siegfried 1's akward greeting with a slightly more boisterous one of her own
"Yo! yeah, slept pretty well - beats getting used to both colony times AND morning patrol timings"
Despite the presence of a technically enemy pilot in the same room, morning coffee was sacred - and messing with people's morning coffee means you usually get even meaner folks on the afternoon by Joanna's reckoning; in her case she was pretty much just wearing an old mechanic suit she used as her excuse for casual clothes - zipper open and sleeves tied around her waist, the remaining scuffs of oil on her forearms and continued presence of gloves marking the fact she'd definitely been working on getting her Caliburn in as good a shape as she could.
"Will say, now that the ghost got smacked and shit calmed down a little, you got a mighty fine captain. Also, nice mug."
<Pose Tracker> Leon Sakaki has posed.
Leon takes a sip from his coffee as Aurora addresses him.
"I've been. . . fine? Slept well, at least. I don't miss military beds one bit."
Aisha's currently in the hangar poring over the 23 as the two speak and committing its specifications to memory, but Aurora doesn't need to know that.
"Oh, Aisha? I don't know if she's technically the captain, but, hey, she does steer the ship," Leon says. "Oh, my mug? What's-" Leon turns the cup around and sighs as he sees the words printed on its surface.
"That little-!" Leon begins to swear, before a certain pink-haired Meltrandi walks in through the door.
"Wonderful woman who is smarter than me and better than I deserve!" Leon finishes, out of pure trained behavior.
"Hey, you two. Hope Leon wasn't bothering you," Aisha says.
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
Aurora catches sight of the mug as Leon jostles it. "Oh, your boyfriend is a pilot?" Aurora's own mug happens to be a Lilium one, and it contains coffee. Sugary coffee. Sugary milky coffee.
Aurora doesn't need to know Aisha is looking at the 23's specs, because she already assumed that anyway. It's how her outfit operates. (This reasoning is dangerous. You could probably convince her SMS runs assassination squads.)
Speaking of, the 23 is pretty impressive, specs-wise! It's a capable new-gen fighter, though it isn't Ex-Gear compatible. The F-type doesn't happen to have any special features, though, compared to the A and S types...
"That ghost sure was weird. Wonder if it used nanomachines or something... I've never fought a ghost before."
Leon sure is well-trained, apparently. Aurora nods. "He wasn't bothering us." She turns to Leon. "I show up with a new fighter, and you're in a Valkyrie? I was hoping you'd have been in something that would've let you keep up better." She sips from her mug.
<Pose Tracker> Joanna Strauss has posed.
"Nah, he's just being polite"
Joanna followed up Aisha's light inquiry by raising her mug and taking a slow - deceptively short - sip of her coffee, a sugarless latte to start the morning; and a somewhat more noticeable scan of the branch manager's figure now that she got the chance, gods it was certainly a miracle those pants of hers didn't constrict on her legs, zoo wee- "Ack-" a small bit of coffee ended up going down the wrong side as she breathed in, causing the SAL pilot to lean forwards and momentarily cough out - hold yourself, Joanna, you survived the pretty ZAFT ladies, you can survive this.
"I'm fine- I'm fine. taking it you two know each other? also, I will aggree, no shame in using an oldie - but a junked up first gen?"
Joanna's little switch had been flipped from indulging in the views to her head being filled with planes; there's nothing wrong with using first generation VFs - provided they're modified in some way to let them keep up. An unadulterated Junker modified to barely be able to dogfight would be almost insulting if budget constraints weren't a thing, and if Aisha's custom Excalibur wasn't so clearly a prized posession
"Didn't seem like nanomachines to me, didn't exactly splash and disperse; it was like a fried oilstain - and of Shin fucking Kudo of all people."
<Pose Tracker> Leon Sakaki has posed.
Leon gives an exasperated sigh into his mug.
"Due to budgeting issues and the inoperability of some equipment, I am currently using the Double Plus for basic operations," Leon says in a practiced monotone. Aisha gives him a pat on the head with a smile.
"You okay, girl?" Aisha asks Joanna with a confused smile, before sauntering a bit as she moves to grab some food.
Leon finishes his coffee and wipes his lips before returning to the conversation.
"I really have no idea what it was, honestly. . ." Leon says. "Aisha said something about it being a 3D effect?"
"I said it was a dimensional anomaly!" Aisha shouts at him. Ostensibly, she really should not be sharing that with a Gaia Saber, but sometimes Leon's ignorance can't stand.
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
Aurora grabs what looks to be a... sachet of chocolate sauce? And dumps the contents into her mug, before swirling them around, watching intently. Then, she resumes drinking it.
Aurora turns to Joanna, pretending not to have found her choking-slapstick act funny. "Mmhm. We met a few months back..."
"It depends on whether the old model was actually tuned up, and from the way it was flying, it wasn't brought up to standard all that great... Be careful, Siegfried."
"Oh, budget issues. That always sucks. Your pay is still coming in on time, right?" Briefly, Aurora wonders something.
"...You could always take a contract with us. We pay good-" unless you're a member of the Newtype Corps, their pay sucks "-and there's a conflict starting in South America recently, so lots of work there. You'd probably wind up working with me. I think I could put in a word about that..." Does this count as getting one over the Colonel? She's not totally sure her mentor would approve of a move like that...
Aurora stares blankly at Leon after he talks about 3D. Then, she turns to Aisha. Then back to Leon. "...I don't really get dimensional anomalies." She can't bring herself to make fun of Leon for his misunderstanding.
She brings her hand up to her temple and rubs it with her forefingers. She DID take her medication, she thinks. It's just One of Those Days. Maybe they'll dismiss it as something to do with Leon being a dumbass.
<Pose Tracker> Joanna Strauss has posed.
Joanna tried to strike out a perfectly stable and definitely not struggled out smile when Aisha asked if she was ok - she was, for the record, just trying to get that akward feeling out of her throat with very careful breaths for a few seconds, a quick set of nods coming from the SAL pilot when the mention of tuning up the junker came up
"Doubt it'll quite benefit the profits to have you be a fireball barreling toward the open ocean"
She tilted her head to the side for a moment before taking another sip of her coffee - offering a job with the Gaia Sabers of all things was... Certainly not that weird, I mean, it was the main military arm for NUNE; but her integrity just kinda prevented her from following up on the line of profits and saying something like yeah! do that! with a straight face. Though the mention of that thing being a dimensional anomaly of some sort certainly falling outside of her field of expertise enough to make it make some sense, but still mean essentially nothing to her.
"That's more a matter influenced about why one flies; S.M.S is a civilian contractor, bunch of the jobs they take depends on what they want to fly for"
There was a noticeable bit of bile beneath her voice, the slightly risen tone noticeably denoting the fact her voice was just a bit too raspy to sound entirely nice despite the noticeable casualness of it all; Joanna would simply step about before taking a seat and placing down her mug, looking at Aurora rubbing her temples before glancing over at Aisha before landing on Leon again
"Flying just to pay the bills is... constricting, shooting somebody isn't comfortable, even when you get paid for it."
She coughed out for a second before growling out for a moment and gulping down a bit more of her latte
"Also next time, put in the call for support before you sortie into an area notoriously trailed by a dangerous pilot, save your acquaintances the heartache"
<Pose Tracker> Leon Sakaki has posed.
Leon raises an eyebrow at Joanna, but doesn't mention it otherwise.
"Look, I'd prefer not to be flying it either, but I'll be fine. Do you guys know how many crashes I've survived? More than you, I bet." Leon puts his hands on his hips like this is something to be proud of.
Leon's face blanches at the offer of employment with the Gaia Sabers.
"I- I don't do military work anymore. Sorry," Leon says, unusually somber.
"I'd rather not . . it's not like I like being a soldier. . ." he mutters. Aisha is cheerfully buttering her toast over at the counter.
"Hey, we put out the call in advance! It's not my fault you showed up late!"
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
Joanna raises the... sort of obvious to Aurora question. "Mm. 'It's better to invest in your skilled pilots than send them out to die.' Leon, please find your way into a better plane."
Regarding Joanna's other contribution... "Everyone needs a job, and if you're a contractor in need of money..." She doesn't mention her ulterior motive. It's not worth mentioning.
She gives Leon a Look. "...More importantly, you should be avoiding crashing?" She looks back down to her coffee and adds some creamer.
She looks at Leon, puzzled. "...Wait, aren't you doing military work right now? I thought you were a mercenary..."
That somberness... That time earlier, at the arcade. It reminds her of that. She's not totally sure what to make of it... She can understand something like it, though. Feelings she doesn't like to dwell on either.
"You still could've given us more warning than 'we're about to go'. We had an operation ready to go when you put out the call."
<Pose Tracker> Joanna Strauss has posed.
"Dude I had to launch out of Junius Seven, try not to burn out while rushing over, and then go through athmospheric reentry. and your boss' pretty face ain't gonna make most people rush"
An offhand comment followed by a simple enough expression of genuinely confusion as Joanna's mind circled back to the remark that he'd crashed a lot of planes, it confused her more than it would most people, because - depending on when he'd crashed those - it meant she likely had better marks when it came to flight training
"Did you crash trainers or drain budget- Actually scratch that, what's the latest thing you crashed?"
Joanna noticeably leaned over the table, pointing at Leon with a quizzical look on her face - her native accent making itself a bit more noticeable in the heat of the moment, intensity only nullified as she haphazardly blew a strand of hair out of her face; 'cause like, Joanna here had crashed a grand total of One(1) plane in her entire career, and it was for crash landing practice.
"Also yeah, dude, get yourself a new plane, hopefully something more affordable than my EF; at least it was worth the bleeding, the damn sword of selection flies smooth as butter"
she stopped for a moment before taking a sip of coffee - leaving barely a quarter of it on the cup - and following up once more
"Or ask your lady over there to whip that junker into something useful at least, drain a bit of that paycheck into keeping yourself in one piece"
<Pose Tracker> Leon Sakaki has posed.
"Hey, look, they don't call me the Crash Expert for nothing. And, for the record, the last thing I crashed was the Prophecy, and that was not my fault."
"I wouldn't really call it a crash, more like a beating - oh, unless you mean that time at Macross City?" Aisha teases.
"Look, I'm sorry, okay?" Leon sighs as the three berate him. "We're not exactly a military operation here. Which, yeah, Aurora - I'm a test pilot and sometimes an assistant researcher. I don't fight in human conflicts except in special circumstances. Which is exactly why I don't fly top-quality equipment 24/7."
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
Aurora stares for a brief moment, confused. In her experience, a test pilot is still military. She's a test pilot sometimes... she thinks on it for a little while, silently drinking her coffee, and she remembers that some people have 'test fly machines outside of live combat' as their job description. "...You lost the other planes you usually fly?" She doesn't press further than that. Even she realises there's probably a story behind that. An embarrasing story.
Nah, fuck it. "What happened to the other VF you flew?" she asks, relying on her atmosphere of quiet introversion to mask the spur of the moment playful malice behind her question. It's an uncharacteristic move for her to act this way, but once in a blue moon this kind of urge seizes her.
"Wait. That time at Macross CIty?" Right, the thing she can't actually let him know she was there for. Probably. Maybe there was another time?
"Also, Joanna is right. You should try your best to get a more survivable plane... at least don't fly into high-risk battles in a junker. Maybe I could see about subcontracting or something..." She's not quite sure how that would work, but somehow she'd rather not see Leon blow up. He's... nice.
<Pose Tracker> Joanna Strauss has posed.
"Wait, what happened at Macross City? Is this like, a Kansas City situation? Did you make an old man mad and get a bottle of wine through your canopy or something?"
Given they were already poking at the man's cheek, might as well poke at the other while they're at it; 'cause there was definitely a story behind that comment, and Joanna here wanted to certainly hear it firsthand. Or Second hand, whichever way it came out first really; then again, Leon here did seem quite susceptible to being bullied by women - which honestly, hard not to at least find common ground on some things there.
"You scrapped up a YF-25- I- Actually nevermind, I was gonna be awfully rude for how good this coffee's been."
She then proceeded to finish off her coffee, standing up and heading over to the nearest counter or sink to leave the cup with a little bit of water, so the coffee and milk remains on the insides of the cup didn't stick in there - always made it difficult to clean afterwards. She then momentarily sidestepped the conversation on Leon's fiascos to approach Aisha momentarily
"While I'm here, miss Aisha, could I trouble you to take a look at my VF? O-Only if you have the time before leaving, heard the EF was pushed forward by someone from SMS and that there's a direct upgrade for it and-"
Come on Joanna, be normal, Be. Normal. Finish the sentence with a normal remark about the plane, don't go off on a ramble about Isamu Dyson and his reckless splurge of money - or about the EF as it was being a limited run, just finish the damn thing-
"And I sort of wanted to see if nothing I myself couldn't fix broke during the fight- Only if you have the time though, don't want to take away from branch manager duties"
Nailed It. Definitely. Those stutters were made up and she definitely was not looking anywhere other than the captain's eyes while speaking, and she definitely was not about to ask wether it'd just cost an arm and a leg to get her EF made into the mythical EF/A, or if Isamu Alva Dyson was simply a fucking hack-
<Pose Tracker> Leon Sakaki has posed.
"Uh, the other planes I flew. . . they aren't with us anymore. I don't wanna talk about it, okay!?" Leon's more playfully exasperated now, his bad mood fading.
"Oh yeah, there were these crazy terrorist dudes that attacked Macross City. Yeah, I totally took care of them, though. Just got a few scrapes along the way. Some paint chipping, nothing to it, really." Leon sounds awfully confident in this. Aisha just shakes her head.
"Oh, sure! I can totally take a look at it. I fly a customized E model myself, after all. I'm more than familiar with the inner workings~" Aisha says to Joanna - is she flirting? Leon blushes a bit from proximity.
Aisha's phone beeps, and she jumps. Pulling out the bio-cell cat phone, she nods her head quickly. "Hold that thought. Our other guest just woke up."
"Oh, crap," Leon blurts. "Hey, sorry guys, but we gotta go. Enjoy the breakfast, your machine should both be fixed if you want to leave, Aurora."
The two of them hurry off further into the Gefion.
<Pose Tracker> Aurora Dusk has posed.
"It happens. Sometimes you get shot down," Aurora says, sort of missing the issue.
At least she's fumbled into improving his mood with her lighthearted mockery?
Leon recounts the story of the Phantom Pain attack on Macross City, and Aurora stares into her coffee. She does not recount her own tale of the event. She does not feel bad about it. Feeling bad about it is for humans, who choose their actions. Weapons follow the path that is set out for them.
Aurora is shaken from her reverie by the beeping phone. Leon is departing now, and Aisha is going to look at Joanna's plane. Aurora is not going to invite Aisha to look at hers, but... she's probably already looked. Maybe it's worth a shot?
Either way, "It was nice catching up."
<Pose Tracker> Joanna Strauss has posed.
<poem> As Aisha gave such a jolly response, a light flush of red washed over the pilot, followed by a noticeable yet silently enthusiastic arm thrust after the branch manager and test pilot left to check on something else; so Leon had dealt with some terrorists eh? impressive, certainly a more colored career than Joanna's own
"Man. That went well, and that was some good coffee."
Noticeably holding back herself back, she sat back down and stretched herself upwards, chuckling for a moment before looking at Aurora with a smile of her own, dedicating the Saber a thriving shrug - a victory of some sort added to miss Strauss' board; just gotta not fumble it.