2022-07-17 Reflections

• Cast: Alma Stirner, Marida Cruz
• Where: La Tour Orbital Elevator
• Date: U.C. 0096 07 17
• Summary: So two redheads enter a space elevator...

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<Pose Tracker> Marida Cruz has posed.

        Contradictions and juxtapositioning define everything. Look, for example, at a painting. It is nothing more than pigment on a flat surface. Markings applied deliberately by a human hand, and yet it holds the power to capture the imagination and make the brain perceive this simple collection of colors and shades as something other than what it is. The televisions and computer screens introduced centuries ago were just patterns of light, fooling the brain into hallucinating images. But this applies on a much larger scale than merely visual hallucinations.

        Rainbows and paintings and tapestries are all fine and good, but it is what is not there that we define our reality by. Heat contrasted with cold, soft with hard, pain with pleasure, alone with together...

        Poverty with fortune, hunger with satiation, hope with despair, love with hate, war with peace...

        Life contrasted with death.

        An invention that would have boggled the imaginations of those from earlier eras, applied to a scale that would have boggled those who invented it: a space elevator. It represents one of the largest contrasts and contradictions there is: Earth and Space. The space elevator links the two, a bridge between worlds in many ways. Where some might see this as transcending the limitations of presence and absence, a fundamental paradigm shift in perception, even here it is absence that defines reality for one woman.

        She has paused while walking along the concourse in the incomplete space elevator to look out through the reinforced windows that compose the outer wall on her right side. She sees the stars, cold and distant, the shuttles and labor machines outside. She is inside, and that is outside, and yet it is this inside that is incomplete, and space that transcends the environment she exists within. That vast emptiness that is not empty at all, if one shifts one's perspective.

        Just like how Marida Cruz shifts the focus of her eyes towards her reflection on the glass, and now she is contrasted with that illusion of her, backdropped by the stars and planets and ships going to and fro.

        Her violet eyes, however, see a young girl with orange-red hair, standing alone, hollow-cheeked, sunken-eyed, scarred, and empty -- or rather, full of despair. Purposeless, lost, and abandoned.

        Both Marida and the reflection of Puru Twelve blink in tandem.

        It's Marida's reflection again.

        But Puru Twelve is also her reflection.

        Contradictions and juxtapositioning. Contrasts and comparisons.

        What she has now, as Marida Cruz, against what she was absent as Puru Twelve.

        And what Puru Twelve lacked, that a younger version of her had possessed.

        For that ghostly image was standing not with the family she once had, but alone against the backdrop of outerspace. Full of stars, and yet so incomparably empty.

        Marida turns her eyes to face forwards again, pulling her cap down so that the brim hides her face a bit more, and continues along her way. She has to speak to an art dealer about a unicorn.

<Pose Tracker> Alma Stirner has posed.

The concourse of La Tour... it's a place Alma Stirner has been twice before, neither time for particularly pleasant reasons.

Once -- 0088, when at last she packed it in on searching for her lost friends on Earth and prepared to fight Neo Zeon in space.

(Why had that battle left her with a feeling of things undone, connections missed...? It wasn't /just/ her friends, was it? Alma has long been absent of the rest of Noisy Fairy.)

Again, 0094 -- an assignment even she understood to amount to little more than harassing spacenoids for the 'crime' of being headed to Earth.

(That one... actually easier. Better her than a Man Hunter unit -- even if she'd gotten a couple of Check-Ins afterward for the crime of daring to show up empty-handed...)

This time, though... there's an intuition -- something teasing at the edge of her perception, something gnawing at her, something, something...

Despite Marida doing her level best to mask herself -- to dip into the crowd -- someone approaches her. The interaction itself -- utterly innocuous. A young woman in a yellow cardigan and a blue shirt enthusiastically jogging toward Marida, and calling, "Hey! I like your hat!" with an enthused smile.

There's something... warm, and loud, about her. A psychic thrum that sets her off from everyone else, a bit -- something familiar, despite the fact that Alma Stirner and Marida Cruz have never met in their lives.

<Pose Tracker> Marida Cruz has posed.

        Periphery vision catches the movement, but Marida is turning before that motion is perceived, if only by a fraction of a second. She doesn't have the time to process that before she is being addressed by the young woman she sees fully when she faces her. Her arms remain loose at her sides, ready for use if necessary but not prepared for said use. She feels a 'presence' emitting from the one addressing her. For a moment, she thinks it might be Lily Jung. That girl had a similar warmth and loudness to her. But no, this is a woman Marida has never seen before. She is sure of it, due to not only the voice and appearance but the nuances of how she 'feels'.

        Presence and absence.

        Expressionless except for a vaguely stern countenance, the taller of the two redheads simply looks back, pausing to see if there is anything else coming, and then replies, "Thank you." She gives a nod and turns as though she intends to leave, but something has her pausing still. Waiting for whatever comes next. Because something comes next. She knows that somehow, despite there being no sign that this interaction will continue.

        What's there and what's not.

        Marida does, however, glance surreptitiously over the other's head to scan the crowd for any sign that others are with the strangely familiar stranger.

<Pose Tracker> Alma Stirner has posed.

One thing becomes apparent: Alma's pretty friendly.

She's also, for Marida's benefit, pretty /alone/; for a moment it looks like someone's moving along behind her, but that person breaks off to one side to check out a different area of the concourse.

Alma has no idea where to take this conversation next, because she's literally just moving on vibes. Then again: she's done that basically every time she's done anything in her life and it's worked out pretty well.

So she just launches the first question that comes to mind. "Hey, wait, wait, don't go yet! This is going to be kind of a weird question, especially since I'm pretty sure you would have been, like, six, but did you live in Side 3 in the mid-0080s? Or maybe have family there?" Scratching at her cheek, she concedes, "... Aaah, no, that's all wrong! I sound like a stalker!! You're a teenager!! That's weird!"

She laughs at herself, pivoting. "Sorry, I just... get hunches about people, a lot. Alma Stirner. Nice to meet you." Where's that familiar feeling even /from/...? Alma doesn't stress about placing it exactly, but it's definitely teasing at the edge of her perception still.

<Pose Tracker> Marida Cruz has posed.

        Marida could just refuse to answer. That would be the smart thing to do. So she does just that, since the other woman has already determined for herself that this conversational track leads nowhere. She continues staring for a little while longer before she continues walking. But despite the fact she's leaving, she says conversationally, "If you want to keep talking, then I am going this way."

        She doesn't say, 'So come with me if you want to'. The message is in what wasn't said. The words that weren't there.

        Marida's own thoughts are racing as she attempts to do a bit of sleuthing herself, though through her own memories rather than by asking outright. After so recently considering her own reflection, and the imagined vision of her younger self, all alone, her mind trends towards family.

        She walks at a steady, unhurried, but very direct pace. She knows where she needs to go, and she's going there.

        Enterprise Shipping's warehouse 17, and a man named Karima Holland who is overseeing the loading of certain fine art wares for the Vist Foundation onto a freighter. Marida is following a lead, on the possibility the end of the path leads to what the Sleeves are looking for. Just a hunch. There's no real evidence to substantiate her gut feeling.

        But here she is, chasing it down with nothing she can really say if she had to explain to the Captain why she risked infiltrating the elevator.

        As she descends the concourse ramp into the ring where the cargo loading bays are, she hasn't stopped to check if the strange girl is following her.

        "Marida." she says by way of introduction. Because of course the older woman is following her. It's what Marida would have done in her place.

        Despite keeping her mission at the forefront of her thoughts, her mind still lingers on the absurd, impossible notion that it arrived at before: Family.

        She stops abruptly, looking up at the painted numbers labeling the huge doors before her. Marida turns so that her back is to the wall beside them, and folds her arms as she waits and looks back finally.

        Was her assumption wrong? Or did her instincts and intuition pan out after all?

<Pose Tracker> Alma Stirner has posed.

Alma's relationship with implication has always been wildly inconsistent. Here, at least, she gets it; you don't tell someone where you're headed mid-conversation if you /don't/ want to keep talking.

Part of growing up for Alma has been learning, in fits and spurts, when to shut up; she follows along, thinking about how to approach this. The silence is an implied no, but both of them are following hunches in their own ways now, so it invites further assessment.

(Alma does briefly entertain the possibility that she could simply be wrong -- that what's unsaid and unknown is nothing, rather than a weird slice of nothings and somethings as yet still obscure to her. ... It's rarely worked out that way in her life, though!)

'Marida,' huh. Alma follows 'Marida' down to Enterprise Shipping's warehouse, still curious -- and only moreso when Marida stops, turns, and folds her arms.

A few moments are all Alma needs to get her thoughts in order, but she does need them -- she feels like this is too delicate an interaction to go on her gut. "I can tell you're busy, and I'm not sure it's my business, but, uh..."

(Alma -- sold off to what became the Flanagan Institute at a young age -- doesn't actually have the world's strongest conception of 'how you engage with a familial feeling.' Indeed, the feeling in her gut may be the first time she's experienced it.)

"Uh... okay. Less weird question." Alma can be a serious person if she tries. Promise. "... Are you looking for something here?" Right. Focus on /now/, stop getting tripped up by what-was and what-could-be and what-might-be.

<Pose Tracker> Marida Cruz has posed.

        No matter where her feelings are tugging her, her mind and body have been thoroughly, agonizingly, near-lethally conditioned to remain on-task in order to complete the mission at hand. Marida wouldn't be here if she didn't have a purpose. That should be obvious. So, the answer is implicitly yes. But Alma is asking another question. One not spoken aloud. An implied question hidden within the question that was actually asked. Even if Alma doesn't know she did so, and no matter how flighty her social skills may be, it's an absence with substance.

        'Are you looking for something here?' means 'What are you looking for?' Going even deeper than that, the subsequent question unspoken, within the previous unspoken question is, 'Will you tell me about it?'

        Marida stares back, still giving no real outwards indication of her feelings despite all the myriad ways her inner self is tugging at nuance and vaguaries.

        Unfolding one of her arms, she raises her hand up, and raps her knuckles against the door next to her lightly but firmly. "I am looking for an art piece for someone who trying to complete his collection. I had a tip that I might find it here, and I might get ahold of it before it can be sent to a different buyer if I make a good enough offer." The offer of 'maybe she won't beat them up if they cooperate'.

        Then it's Marida's turn. She has given enough personal information, and she still doesn't know why Alma is asking about her. But she feels that same urge to chase down answers. She has the outline of the shape of an inkling of an idea, but she is still going to be shooting blindly here if she pursues it. Holland isn't due for another few minutes yet.

        Well, nothing ventured nothing gained.

        'Family'. She knows Puru Two is still out there. So, could this be...

        "Are you related to someone named Elpeo Ple?" She was going to ask more subtly, but it just spilled out of her mouth. Oops.

<Pose Tracker> Alma Stirner has posed.

An... art piece? Alma has to think about that for a second... but she's cannier than she was as a teenager. She's kind of had to be, ever since Gryps; she knows that the art world is often also the criminal world, because she's checked up on more than one 'art' transaction herself.

... but if she chases that too hard, she realizes, based only on a hunch -- she risks becoming the sort of cynical person, stuck in cycle after cycle, that she's chosen not to ever become.

Some things stay unsaid for a reason, one supposes. The 'said' here is more interesting, and more personal, anyway.

Elpeo...

... it's an unfamiliar name. But it doesn't get an immediate 'no,' either.

So Alma thinks. (A rarity, for her.) "Hmmm... honestly, my family register is a little weird," she answers, instead. "A lot of my records got purged when I was twelve or thirteen, and then /again/ at sixteen or seventeen?" The grimace-smile on her face marks her clear embarrassment.

"So, uhh... couldn't... say, actually. What's she like?"

<Pose Tracker> Marida Cruz has posed.

        No, it's not a 'no'. Neither is it a yes. But family registry getting purged? Repeatedly? There is much that could be made of that, but Marida isn't going to pry deeper into something that Ms. Sterner clearly doesn't have much information about. Allegedly, anyway. At the question of 'what was she like'? Marida leans against the wall, arms folded again, and looking off at the floor. This ring of the elevator concourse has suddenly gotten very empty and quiet. Deeper into the passage, the lights have been cut except for the ones over each set of industrial-scale doors, to help identify one's destination.

        The reduction in traffic doesn't go unnoticed by the woman in the coat and cap. Probably Holland or his 'friends' diverting people to reduce the chances of anyone getting in the way of the Vist Foundation's dealings.

        What was she like? Does Marida even remember? She wasn't like Two, that much is clear.

        It only takes closing her eyes and picturing Elpeo's face to bring the associated memories back. It makes her wonder how foolish she could be to have ever thought she might forget them.

        "She was a lot like you." she answers quietly.

<Pose Tracker> Alma Stirner has posed.

That 'was' does a lot of heavy lifting. Alma may be a pretty happy-go-lucky person, but she has a little bit of that Newtype moodiness -- so when she realizes she's put her foot in it a little bit, she goes silent for a little while.

"Sorry," she starts, after an awkward false start. "... Okay, that's kinda spooky," she admits. "I guess... maybe?" Did she have whole family members she just... forgot? It's... actually a little worrying, in the way that few things are for Alma; the memories she /has/ are such treasures to her that the idea she might have some that were simply removed actually shakes her.

What this actually tells her, though -- is that there's a string she could pull. Some area of her life, potentially, that's simply... unexplored. Could this be the source of her feelings regarding 'Callisto,' too...?

"... Uh -- well, okay. Let's... get started there!" In the end, though: Alma's a straightforward person and she's going to tug at threads and make movements and not worry too much about saids or unsaids, knowns or unknowns. What she knows for sure is that there's a connection between her and other people and she owes it to them to honor that connection.

... Even if it turns out to be nothing at all.

"I guess -- right now, I can see what I can find out about her... besides what you already know, I mean. If you know anywhere I could start looking..." Words are kind of in the way of this one.

So she leaves them unsaid. The connections beat the words, every time.

Reaching into her cardigan's pocket, she pulls out her phone. "... Do you have a comms number I can get ahold of you at? In case I learn anything." 'About you,' 'about me,' 'about us.' ... Trying to parse out which of those, too: better unsaid.

<Pose Tracker> Marida Cruz has posed.

        Contact information. Names exchanged. Purposes spoken of that she should have kept quiet about. Now, someone she doesn't even know how she's connected to is offering to help track down family she thought was gone forever. First Two, now... But Elpeo is definitely dead, just like the rest of her sisters.

        Definitely.

        ...Aren't they?

        Their absence has been the substance of pain and loneliness. The separation is what makes her long for closeness with this stranger.

        Marida opens her eyes, to find a phone being shown to her. She stares at it. If that were a gun, she could be dead right now. Or even a knife.

        But there's no surprise, no fear. And, after a moment's hesitation, the hesitation is over too.

        She takes out a communicator of her own and programs her number into Alma's by touching them together. She looks up the ramp she descended, towards the busier and brighter ring of the concourse. Chattering, walking, laughter, life.

        Then she glances to her right, into the darkness of the cargo loading ring. Scarce lighting, cold and empty. Chasing beads of artificial light like electrical breadcrumbs.

        If she keeps chasing this lead, and following this trail, will she be able to find her way back? Or will she be gobbled up when she goes nibbling at the wrong door?

        Holland is late.

        It has been five minutes of waiting now. How did that come to be?

        Marida puts her phone away in a pocket of her gray longcoat, and then says, "Please let me know if you find anything. I will do the same for you. It was good to meet you."

        Marida pushes away from the wall after saying that. 'Where I can start looking'. It's not as though Marida hasn't done any investigation of her own. And if she couldn't find anything, what can this Alma woman do? And yet...

        Marida feels like she can entrust herself to the other redhead. At least in this manner. It's rare for her to so quickly form an attachment to someone. Especially these days.

        "You might start with Ma--" she stumbles over her words briefly, before correcting. "--a man named... Glemy Toto. From Neo-Zeon." Maybe that's too much. She wants to add more. To keep talking. To find out more about Ms. Stirner.

        But she leaves it at that, and just stands silently and awkwardly, the hint of softness in her features reverting to blank, patient nothingness.

        Absence of expression.

        Right after an almost-emotional-response.

        The nothing that says everything.

        Marida wonders how Alma will react if she finds out about... Them.

<Pose Tracker> Alma Stirner has posed.

It's... a lot to think about, honestly. Alma honestly looks a little giddy, even childish, as she taps her phone to Marida's; even after all this time, even after becoming a little bit more of a person-in-herself instead of a person-in-her-bonds, there's part of her that finds literally every connection she makes to be a new and delightful experience.

Alma doesn't know much about the beads of light Marida's chasing; she's found her own natural one to chase, and for the moment, that's got every last bit of attention she can muster.

"Glemy Toto? Like... from the coup?" Alma /almost/ ended up in that battle herself, in her time with the AEUG -- but things didn't line up quite right for her to be in the same theatre at the same time. A small missed connection. Could it have been a larger one than she realized? ... Well, the only way to find out is to take those unsaid things and missed connections and make someone turn them into something said, something connected.

"Okay. I can start there." She's... certainly not an intelligence operative, but she could start digging. "... If you want to," she murmurs, "you might have better luck finding out some stuff about me than I have. Try poking at Zeon Newtype research before they brought it all under Flanagan."

/That's/ a buried thread if there ever was one, but... Maybe it's all connected. The Fairies' records being expunged, her own past, Marida's, Callie's...

... and if it is, they're not going to do it alone.

"It was nice to meet you, Marida. I'm going to let you handle your business, okay?" ... She really ought to report this. This is suspicious activity.

Trusting has never let Alma down, though, so why stop doing it? Instead, she takes a step back, and gives a nod.

<Pose Tracker> Marida Cruz has posed.

        Marida nods back. "I will. I know some people who may be able to help." She still feels like she should say more, but that is an ever-diminishing part of her as the mission consumes more and more of her mental resources on trying to figure out why Holland isn't here, and why there's no sign of the workers paid well to mind their own business about Vist operations, who would normally already be working.

        Trap? Unforeseen delay? Something else? Was she set up? Was the lead just wrong?

        She'll spend some time thinking about that, as she stands by the closed and inactive doors, waiting for Alma to go, and watching her as she does so, only to stand there in the break-point between light and dark for several more minutes, just in case it was a scheduling error.

        The twilight layer yields no answers, however. And the longer she stays here without anything happening, the more her hackles are up about something bad being about to happen. Whatever she is going to do, she can't just stay here.

        She turns to her left, and follows after Alma, up the ramp to the brighter ring, even if several minutes apart. And unless Alma has likewise been hesitating and standing around, they'll likely no longer be in sight of each other.

        But the glass wall of the upper ring, now on Marida's left, is in sight of her.

        She turns to look at it. She sees herself reflected in the glass, and also in the stars and blackness beyond it. She also sees a young girl with fiery orange hair, in a two-tone blue pilot suit, helmet tucked under arm with the numbers '012' printed on it. The girl's reflection is standing beside her.

        Marida turns to her right to face the girl who isn't there, only to find herself and her younger self standing there together, alone. Floating in the void.

        Marida's attire has changed to the red, gold, and white with green-collar that is her Sleeves dress uniform. A self-image superimposed over her current self.

        Puru Twelve looks up at her older self, expression subtly 'challenging'. No words are exchanged between the woman in the Sleeves uniform and the girl in the Neo-Zeon flight suit, but the message is clear regardless.

        'Well? Are you going to say anything about her to Master?'

        Marida looks back blankly, only the absence of her ever-present semi-stern exterior suggesting any softness.

        She doesn't answer the unspoken question.

        Not even to herself.