2022-10-02: Take The Time

• Cast: Rena Lancaster, Zoltan Akkanen
• Where: Australia [OCU] - Torrington Base (Destroyed)
• Date: U.C. 0096 10 03
• Summary: Two people chained by their pasts cross paths. Even through the Newtype connections, disagreements still fester.

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<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.

Two days ago, Torrington Base was destroyed.

It was a complicated event. The actual explosive destruction came from ZAFT-planted explosives that caused the entire military base to go up in a fireball. The metaphorical explosions were also greater: the NT-D system out of control, the attack by the Shamblo that was indiscriminate, and the reappearance of Amuro Ray... but something was terribly wrong with him.

It ended with everyone fleeing, but that included an unknown submarine that took away the Unicorn Gundam and several other combatants.

This, officially, is why Rena Lancaster came back.

Over the fire-blasted, ashen ruin of the base, an orange-and-white variable fighter soars through the air. It has shifted into GERWALK mode: legs and arms out, hovering over the destruction. In the cockpit, Rena Lancaster looks down.

There aren't answers below. Just devastation.

Rena stares at it. Her VF is easy enough to pick up on long-range sensors, without much Minovsky interference. Her emotions are, too: a complicated mixture of despondency, of frustration at being here now and not being able to change things, of wanting and wishing she could have done more. Someone with the right senses can feel that, as sure as see and detect the GERWALK hovering over the base.

"Where did you go, Leina...?" she asks, to no one in particular. But, that may be felt too.

BBSYS: Post 278, 'Orbit Base Has A Normal One' has been published to Cutscenes & Logs by Guy Shishioh.

<Pose Tracker> Zoltan Akkanen has posed.

Two days ago, Zoltan was minding his own damn business in space.

Truth be told, he did take note of what happened on Torrington Base. The part of his mind beating with ideals kept watch, ketp track, insinuated and yelled at him to compulsively keep a note of the major goingons. NT-D. Shamblo. Amuro. Amuro Ray. The White Devil. That man. Aaaah, he needed a few more sleeping pills these past two days, knowing that Amuro Ray was...alive? In stasis? It didn't matter. Alive is alive, and that's the main point.

Being on scouting duty was the least he could do to keep the higher ups from yelling down his back. Amuro Ray. That was why he was here. The imprinted single-minded fascination with him beating deep within, an implant that refused to recede. The small prayer that he'd be sleeping slightly better tonight after calming that particular voice.

The Sinanju Stein floated over the area, sensors in low-power as he visibly surveilled the wreckage. Of course there'd be nothing, of course there'd be! Who expected some clear, obvious, blatant sign of Amuro Ray two days after the event!?

A click of the tongue. Just look it over. HIs emotions were clear and in the open: Frustration. Discontent. Always there? Intensified? The aura of irritation pouring out from him in barely restrained waves, taking a second to close his eyes and calm down those very same waves. "Of course Amuro Ray wouldn't reappear..." ...That wasn't fear in his voice, was it?

...Wait a minute. Brow furrowing in concentration, an eyebrow tilting up at the vague, gut feeling. A familiar one, what with brushing against Newtype after Newtype. "Hoh..." And bit by bit, the mobile suit turned in a lazy curve, gazing down at the cold ruins below as those comms were flicked on.

"Oi, VF. I can see you." The luck of a raised mood. Maybe he'll have something of a report this time around. "Searching for something in the area too?"

<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.

A Sinanju-type unit -- any Sinanju-type unit -- immediately gets Rena's attention. She stares at it on her sensors, her eyes widening. It is white, though, instead of red; it is not Full Frontal.

In a way, that makes it more dangerous. The Sinanju Stein is not immediately known to her.

She can sense the pilot, too, she realizes. Frustration and discontent -- it's a mirror of her own emotional state, but for different reasons. (Or are they so different?) Her brown eyes widen at the sensors. Does she catch a little fear from him?

She knows, too, that he knows she is here. He can feel it turn.

Rena looks at the Sinanju Stein as it does that slow, lazy turn towards her. Her comms flip on, in turn; she wears a Londo Bell pilot suit, matching her IFF code, and under the helmet, she is a woman in her early twenties with ash blue hair. A streak in it is dyed red.

"...Yeah. Some of ours that didn't come back," she says. "Are you here for the same?"

There is an instant sensation of being guarded. Not quite reaching for the trigger -- but wondering if she will have to. That sense doesn't dispel the frustration and discontent she feels, or that she shares in turn.

<Pose Tracker> Zoltan Akkanen has posed.

The mobile suit floats unperturbed; Lightly on the defensive side, considering how wide of a berth its taking. Barely raising the barrel in a typical stance of wariness, keeping distance.

He could feel his brow twitch. The frustration of a different sort. Wants. More. More. They washed over him with a familiarity born of marianting in those same emotions, giving a quick glance down. Still no sign of Amuro Ray. Duh.

His own face was easily visible under the yellowish-tint of the face window adorning his simillarly grey suit. Double-scarred eyes, a substantial lock of hair plastered to the side from the helmet. He's grinning, of course.

"You could call it that. I just want to see that a devil decided to stay down." The smallest, curteous gesture towards the wasteland. "Though if any robot survived for two days, they'd be idiotic to not call for help."

<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.

"I thought... maybe if their communications went out."

It's a weak excuse. She came knowing the futility -- that the Unicorn escaped with that unknown submarine -- but wanted to do something anyways. She wanted more than what she saw, two days before. She looks at him and those double scarred eyes, with the hair plasted to one side.

It's a memorable look.

"You wanted to find Amuro Ray," she says. She feels that sense of frustration; that and the term devil tells her what she needs to know. "He took off at the end of the fight. Why... why do you want to find Amuro Ray, though?"

She frowns. "Do you have a death wish? People like you and me, we're--we're not made to fight someone like that."

<Pose Tracker> Zoltan Akkanen has posed.

"Hah. Smart enough to admit it, at least. Better than some people I've talked to after these kinds of battles." Slightly more relaxed, slightly more...lenient. He still has the aura of frustration...

...But he got all he needed to know. As if on blatant cue, the waves of frustration roiled invisibly through the air. Amuro Ray. So he was alive. Who cared what his actual status was? People were calling him Amuro Ray. People were calling him The White Devil. If that was the case, if that were true, then...Then...

Silence reigned from him as he looked away from the comm camera, mumbling to himself. "Him, alive? Aha, that's even better than I thought." Rolling his shoulders as his lips blossomed into a full-on grin, doing his best to surpress the sudden frustrated fear. It was Amuro Ray. It was him, and he'd have to check some stuff once he was back. Amuro Ray, Amuro Ray!

"I do." There was no use trying to avoid that train of thought. The admission and sheer, blatant, obvious tell would bait anyone. "I didn't think he was back, that streak of outdated junk..." A deep breath in. A deep breath out. This was just the first step.

"Of course I don't, lady. Does anyone want to die for this?" A wide sweep of the arm. The destruction. The desecration. The world pocked with marks of humanity fighting on its flesh. "No, if he is alive, then that means there's a problem in general, wouldn't you say so?"

<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.

"The way he wreaked havoc there... I don't think it's so outdated," Rena says. "Or maybe it's just the pilot."

Unless, of course, Zoltan means that Amuro Ray is outdated. She realizes that she isn't sure -- and sometimes, Newtypes can understand each other but still be uncertain. They're only human, after all. She watches him, and she feels a little bit of fear at that grin.

"I'm sure it was him. I've never met him, but..." But people who did seemed to know. She swallows, then she looks around the battlefield. "...No, I don't think anyone wants to die. But you're right. Him being here means... something's gone terribly wrong."

She frowns. "Why did you want to find him so badly, though? He wasn't--he wasn't really... like you'd hear about, from the news and reports and everything."

<Pose Tracker> Zoltan Akkanen has posed.

"Anyone gone for a few years has to have gotten the slightest bit rusty. Maybe it's his Gundam that got boosted up? That Triple Zero Energy or whatever is probably juicing him up into a Roid Rage!" The frustration was abating, even if the core still remained. Fear. Distrust. Genuine wonderment at how it came to pass. Thoughts upon thoughts, a multilayered texture of a man dealing with the war inside his head.

"If everyone's saying it's him, then it has to be him." And just as quickly settling back down. Think. "And if it's not him, then someone's as good as him and hijacking who he is. We've seen that before, haven't we? Some person calling themselves The Second Coming Of Char, right?"

Full Frontal was a man he loathed. If the sardonic tone wasn't enough, the sheer surge of emotion sealed the deal.

"So if someone's calling themselves The White Devil, and they're attacking others, there's an obligation to kill him. No one wants to think of Amuro Ray badly." Save for him. "If he gets shot down, whomever did so would be remembered as the person who did so."

"And they'd be remembered more than The Red Comet, wouldn't they?"

<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.

"I fought someone else with Triple Zero, once. I--um--" Rena wouldn't use the term 'roid rage' in general. She raises an eyebrow. "...I think it makes someone different, but not entirely. I'm not sure if it makes them stronger, though."

She hesitates, as she listens to that -- and she catches that. Someone who, at least likely, is a member of the Sleeves that hates Full Frontal. She can feel that loathing. It surprises her.

She doesn't latch onto it, yet.

"What if we could save him, though? Other people came back from Triple Zero," Rena says. "They... they can find themselves again. If he survived, after the Axis Shock and everything that happened, then--then that's another miracle, right?"

She hesitates, though. There is something else, that goes unsaid, but Zoltan can feel it.

She understands wanting to be remembered -- to be highly regarded. It's there, lurking in the back of her mind: a desire to be recognized for her own accomplishments, rather than ones chosen for her. Not as an AEUG ace's protege; not the daughter of a mother that he can mentally glimpse only barely, wearing a late UC 0080's Neo-Zeon uniform. Her own deeds. Maybe those don't include killing Amuro Ray...

But it's also not a completely alien idea.

<Pose Tracker> Zoltan Akkanen has posed.

He allowed the question to settle in before leaning back, brow furrowing in thought once more. A very...Emotional person, to be sure. The mobile suit was in a holding position now; Merely swaying back and forth as it floated above, just to keep himself on the ball with reaction times.

"Different? But if it is Triple Zero, then you're saying he truly is alive?" ...That does change the urgency a slight bit. But the unsaid goal remained the same. "If he could be saved, what could he do? Look at it. Look all around you. You're not blind, I hope." On his words carried his emotions. The frustation was peaking, echoing out in the comms. Even a normal person could sense the irritation he was carrying.

"This is all after what he's tried to do. This is all happening after he managed to unite everyone. And you're going to tell ME that he can return, see what's happening, and be satisfied with himself? A bunch of idiots up above continuing to smack people together and nodding when they have some scrap of land that others would barely take a piss on? Don't patronize me, him, or Char in that way. The White Devil tried doing something, the Red Comet tried doing something, and it all. Ended. In nothing."

A deep breath in. Frustration. A deep breath out.

"Killing him might be a mercy, since the final thing he'd properly remember is doing the Axis Shock."

In that sentence carried a bit of melancholy. All this? For what? If Amuro Ray was back, he might as well use it for his own ends. To push, to thrash.

To prove those bastards up above that he could surpass The Red Comet.

<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.

"That's..."

It is hard to argue with. Amuro Ray created a miracle -- and the world went on the same way as it always did. The Federation continued to slide into greed and disregard of its citizens; Zeon's embers still burned, seeking independence; the world kept fighting, killing people off. She looks down, her shoulders slumping.

"...I don't want the world to be like that," she says, finally. Quietly. "When... when people put everything on one person... it makes them responsible for it. If we want the world to be better, then it's something multiple people have to do. And maybe--maybe it's rotten, how things have ended up, but... people are tying to make it better."

'I'm trying to make it better,' she thinks -- she tells him -- without even saying it out loud. She looks back up, her eyes on his through the communications system.

"I think if he can be saved from Triple Zero, then... that would better than killing him," Rena says. "So maybe he can be there, when we start to figure this whole mess out. Even if it's not everyone, even if it's just some of us."

<Pose Tracker> Zoltan Akkanen has posed.

"If the Axis Shock can't make people come together, if the many, many times Mazinger or Jeeg did so, what makes you think we can?" A scoff. "Putting everything on one person is how people want to live. To put them in, to pat them on the back, and to say 'Go get them'!" A wave of bile. "And if they fail, they'll find the next savior to pin their hopes on."

...Make it better. Make everything better. The voiceless proclamation pingponged around in his mind, giving pause. He's gazing right back, those pupils barely wavering.

"...I don't think he can do anything. The world's moved on from him. At best? He'll just rot somewhere and be trotted out as a hero who shouldn't do anything and be the prettiest boy wonder without any power." Another scoff. "At worst, he'll probably be dissected by some idiots who want to make more like him. He won't come back a hero. He'll come back to a world which wants more of him at any damn cost."

...Right. "...Not to mention...If he comes back, then he'll have to deal with Sayla, and her place is going to be compromised to hell and back! You can't exactly say you're doing it for yourself if The War Hero picks a side, right? People aren't smart; It'll take a few chance meetings and then everyone will think that Sayla is going to influence her donations for Amuro."

<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.

"It's... it's incremental progress, right? We get another chance, and we try to do better, and build on that," Rena says. She frowns, though -- and she hesitates, because she knows he isn't wrong. She has seen it before, with Amuro Ray -- and writ smaller, too. People often let one or two people do all the work. She has been the one doing all the work.

It's true with the great and the small. She almost shrinks, a little, even if she keeps looking at him.

"I--I don't know if it's that he should do something. He shouldn't be dissected. But... it would be good if he had his chance to rest," Rena says. She hesitates when it comes to Sayla; she has only heard of Sayla Mass. She never met her, before, but she knew of the former White Base ace.

"Shouldn't Sayla make that decision, though?" she says. "I've lost people. And I--I wouldn't want someone deciding for me, if there was a chance to get them back."

<Pose Tracker> Zoltan Akkanen has posed.

"And, do tell, what exactly is there after dropping an asteroid?" Axis Shock. The fate of mankind in the balance. Axis Shock. The want to unite everyone and stop this damn fighting. Axis Shock. If even after that...What was left of the auoura that blossomed that day?

His mind refuses to accept that a better world is possible. The largest showing and still? And still? The battlefield is in his mind, his view, the reflection of his pupils showing the desolation around them.

"If he could rest, I think he'd be settling down into a hellscape." A click of his tongue. "No one will want him to go quietly. He has to be a hermit, and we all know how people get with power sitting there without someone at the helm. I can't see it, I can't see it at all! If not Neo-Zeon, then ZAFT. If not ZAFT, then BioNet. NERV, G-Hound, Londo Bell, AREU, BU, OAC, OCU, REA, someone in each and every single one of them will want Amuro Ray's technique, his expertise, or just him to act as a figurehead." A deep breath. Holding it. He's practically radiating frustration. Frustration at everything.

An exhale.

"His life isn't ever going to be restful. People think he's in the past, but they're going to try and rip a future from him. He's doomed." A light chuckle; Sardonic, mocking. "He decided to give himself up to whatever happened at Axis Shock. Is it worth showing that what he did was for nothing, that he'll be back to be fought over, that everything he touches will be overcast with him being The White Devil? What an idiotic thought. He'll be saved at the cost of everything he wants to do."

<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.

What is left after Axis Shock?

It inspired her -- and terrified her -- into deciding to not live out a civilian life in a Side 1 colony. But it also didn't change the world forever.

"Even if... even if the powerful people have continued as they always did," Rena says. "I don't think everyone forgot. I think some people are still trying to do better!"

She is trying to do better. But, Rena has trouble owning what she does and wants. It's easier to say it's other people.

"Maybe--maybe they would want to use him. I can't argue that someone won't," Rena says. "But... but who are you--who are any of us--to make the call for him? Shouldn't people be able to decide for themselves? And can't someone rise above who people decide they are? Can't I? Can't you?"

Leina Ashta teleports in.
Leina Ashta leaves for Pacific Ocean [---].

<Pose Tracker> Zoltan Akkanen has posed.

Even without an audible answer, the feelings were in the air. Receptive, barely accepting, the Cyber-Newtype twitching his eyebrow as he weathered the roiling storm both inside and out.

Clouds had begun to mask the sunny sky.

"And we'll have to give that time, right? Time, time, it's always time, it's never time. If time is what we need, then those who're inspired by Axis Shock will never live to see it. If twenty years, if thirty years, if more and more keep ticking by, girl, then we'll all die and that's when we'll have peace."

After all, that's what Char wanted.

"People have seen him. Triple Zero? If he is himself, he already chose, right? Is it still him? Then he needs to be put down. If we rip it out, is he mentally well to choose? Can he...Can he really say that he's who he says he is after that?"

Can he? Can he rise above who he is? Amuro? Himself? ...The scars of a Cyber-Newtype keep screaming within. "People can try. But they need to be free." Closing his eyes for a second. Calm. Calm. Calm.

"If I can't rise above who I am, then I'll be the one who kills Amuro Ray to prove that I can be above."

<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.

"Even if it doesn't happen overnight -- even if it takes years -- it could still happen before then!" Rena insists, her voice more desperate then. She shakes her head, even as she tenses in the cockpit. It's not a movement towards aggression, though; it's a tension with finding her heart and her ideals at war.

Shadows from the clouds are cast over the orange-and-white of the Prophecy. It floats there, its thrusters keeping it suspended, as Rena looks at the console.

"I can't think that peace only comes when we all die. And I can't accept that!" she says, her voice louder. "Triple Zero might have taken away his freedom to decide away, but--"

She shakes her head. "People are more than what they're forced to be! They have a right to make a decision... and we have an obligation to trust them, when they're free to!" she says.

She watches him close his eyes. "What does killing Amuro Ray prove about you? What does killing anyone prove about you? Why does proving the meaning of your own life mean ending someone else's!?"

<Pose Tracker> Zoltan Akkanen has posed.

People are more than what they're forced to be.

"...Don't joke with me about that bullcrap." The faintest hint of malice. "What does it prove? I'll tell you what it proves, Newtype. Killing him will prove that people can be made to surpass Amuro Ray. Killing someone means that their argument is invalid, because they're dead. Killing a dead man walking so he doesn't have to see what his damn life amounted to, to see everything that he tried failed and fell back in. Killing him means proving that the past should stay dead and buried, not paraded around like a puppet. Killing him means that the past can stay where it damn well belongs, and not let him suffer. Killing him will prove that Char could unite everyone, since he managed to make everyone go against him for the sake of humanity. If I can kill Amuro, I can take Char's place. I can be above Char. And if I'm above Char..."

"...Then the whole world will unite, won't it?"

Are you out there, Amuro Ray? The transplated ideals hammering inside my brain? I know Char Aznable. It may be biased. It may be because those damn bastards wanted me to be another him. If nothing else, you better damn well listen.

"That's why Amuro Ray has to die, you anorexic excuse for a mobile suit! The past should stay dead! If people keep looking at the past, wanting for the past, wanting to get another person from the past alive and well, to push past those damn ideals for their own damn wants, then him and Char will never truly die! It'll happen over and over and over and over, and you DAMN well know they'll try to make a Full Frontal out of Amuro Ray! Out of Sayla Mass! Out of Bright Noa! And the only way to stop all that is to rip out the zit that the universe decided to vomit back at us!"

The distrust. The anxiety. The frustration. Personal demons melding with worldviews mashing against the ideals that had subliminated into his soul, Zoltan Akkanen glaring at the comm screen.

"I can't accept that this world will let Amuro Ray live in peace. They won't let Char live in memories. Tell me that! Tell me that Amuro Ray won't be made into the same figure Char Aznable is!"

<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.

"Someone dying doesn't mean their ideas and their hopes end with them! The people they affected, the people they touched--those continue on!" Rena shouts back, now. It isn't very professional or soldierly; her face is red, and she isn't really thinking to pay attention to an attack, if the situation suddenly changed. But, this is a fight, even if it isn't a battle, isn't it?

"The past shouldn't be brought out to replace the present, but that doesn't mean the past has no value!" she continues on. "And killing him doesn't mean you take Char's place. It doesn't mean you rise above Char!"

She shakes her head. "It just means you would be making the same mistakes as Char! I can't tell you that people won't decide that for Amuro--for anyone else!"

She bites her lip.

"But I can tell you that he--and everyone else-- have the right to decide!" she shouts. Her voice quiets. "We have the right to decide, too. You have the right to decide. Can't you be more than someone defined by who you have to overcome?"

It's an earnest question.

But it contains a lie. He can sense it: the self-incrimination. The lingering thought that she became a pilot -- joined Londo Bell -- and kept pushing herself to overcome someone from her past. It's an emotion and a thought that she shares, without intending to, but it's there for Zoltan all the same.

<Pose Tracker> Zoltan Akkanen has posed.

"And their ideals are what need to be taken for the future, not the damn person themselves! Axis Shock happened! Char and Amuro are dead! They should stay dead, and people should live with them in mind!" Zoltan's mind was roiling. Grasping at the threads to weave them whole, to sharpen into the argument that can weave its way through the volley of counters.

"The past is the past, the people are going to remember. But the person themselves? To bring them back, to proclaim that they'll save everything after they've done what they did? You should know what it means when a person has to do the same thing, over and over and over again, with the absolute same result."

'It's hell'. Unvoiced. The lashing of a man frustrated at himself, frustrated at his place in life, frustrated at the expectations, the people above him, the idiots below him, a singular wave of anxiety, turmoil, and the stubbornness and mental capacity to keep stepping forward on that flawed foundation.

"The right to decide was taken by him a long time ago, girl! You know what they did to him after the One Year War!? I'll tell you! They put him down, locked him away, and tossed away the key! THAT was his rest!" Char Aznable's training. Char Aznable's memories. Char Aznable's ideals.

"If the past can't stay dead, there's no way anyone will ever move forward! THAT'S WHY AMURO RAY HAS TO DIE!"

"THE PAST IS WHAT PEOPLE MAKE OF IT, AND THE PAST HAS TO DIE FOR IT TO BE THE PAST!" A scream born of the reception of the past. Escaping the past, who he was, who Zoltan Akkanen never had to chance to be. "We can't move forward if we keep reliving the past, and Amuro Ray IS the past!"

There was sweat on his brow. The defense of Char Aznable of ensuring that Amuro Ray...Amuro Ray...could sleep.

<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.

Rena can feel his anger. The way his mind churns to form the arguments; the way that it's training, ideals, and memories that drive him forward. They feel so familiar -- even if she cannot quite understand it. She shakes her head, feeling that wave of anxiety.

It is matched by a wave of her own emotions. A crash of desperation, of wanting something to believe in, of her own anxieties and fears. Wanting the world to be better is something very different than knowing she can make it better.

"The past isn't something we can kill!" Rena says, her voice raised and heated. "It's--people will keep finding someone new to cling to! We have to find a way to make the future brighter, not... not destroy the things that came before! That's no different than clinging to the past!"

She shakes her head sharply. "Can't you see that!? It would just chain you to it, too!"

<Pose Tracker> Zoltan Akkanen has posed.

Belief. Belief in oneself. The Sinanju visibly shakes as the waves of emotion crash, nary a shot fired in reponse. No, this was a fight. But this was one with words. The imprint screaming. Shooting would solve nothing, but would screaming solve anything, even?

"Of course! But not as a messiah! Not as the literal sole thing they cling onto! Full Frontal is the past in full force! Amuro Ray coming back doesn't leave anything for the future! We kill the past to brighten the future! If we can't leave the past behind, if we keepn ressurecting the people from it, of course it'll stay! AND I CAN'T HAVE THAT!"

A smack of the console in front of him. The hard pants of someone straining to free themselves, to try and understand, to reject that understanding, to instinctually understand it anyways...

"If it takes a single person to chain themselves down to stop these idiots from acting like Axis Shock amounted to nothing, then I'll stab Amuro Ray in the heart myself!" Such was Char's ideals. The future is there. The future is ripe for the taking.

The people needed to be shoved forward by force, damn the consequences.

<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.

"We have to move beyond the past, and we can't do that by striking people down!" Rena answers, shaking her head. She reels from the wave of emotion from him, crashing into her. Her face is flushed and her eyes are trembling with emotion. It's matched by her own: that driving desire to believe in herself, to believe in something, and make the future one that she wants.

And the anxiety that she will be held back by the past, by the people who defined her.

She shakes her head again.

It's not Char's ideals that drive her. She feels those ideals; the same ones imprinted so strongly on Zoltan. She can't know who made them or where they came from, but she can recognize their strength. "You can't kill people to show them a miracle happened, Zoltan! And--and I--"

She makes a decision. "I won't let you do that. The future can't be built by adding tragedy to tragedy!"

BBSYS: Post 279, 'At the Bottom of the Gravity Well: Two Unicorns' has been published to Cutscenes & Logs by Emilia Eschonbach.

<Pose Tracker> Zoltan Akkanen has posed.

A sharp breath in as the wave lashed at his body, at the emotions thrashing about in the cloudy sky. The sun slowly washing away to a dull grey as the overcast clounds hung over the battlefield, Zoltan's eyes firmly locked on the comms in question.

"If the past can't be left unturned, then the future has no choice than to keep relieving the past! If Axis Shock can't leave Amuro Ray to die, then we have to do it for him."

Zoltan himself was deinfed by others. Set by others. Char's ideals rang in his ears. His own actions were, are in pursuit of what other people say.

He couldn't have another chain binding him down. Not Amuro Ray. Not the White Devil. "I'm not in it to make miracles for others, Rena!" The communication between people. The want to make oneself known.

The will to step forward even as the scars of the past scald the soul.

"The Tragedy of Amuro Ray needs to be preserved. If he comes back, he can't be allowed to live. The White Devil has seen enough action."

"We need to exorcise him and lay him to rest."

<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.

"The future always has a choice! We get to decide what it is, and we... we have to learn to be better. We won't learn anything by trying to destroy the past!" Rena say. She sees the way the clouds grow overcast. It registers, dimly, that a couple of warnings are coming in: a rainstorm, moving into their area. The clouds are starting to look gray overhead.

It isn't so different for Rena, in that way. Her mother committed terrible crimes; she lived her life to try to make up for them, by becoming a better person. A life lived in contrast to someone's ideals and actions, rather than to enact them again.

"You don't have to make miracles," she says, her voice softer. "You... you just have to pick another path. One where you're not choosing to chain yourself down! One where you're not taking someone from the world and deciding their fate."

Rena frowns, biting her lip again. Then, she shakes her head. "I won't let you do that. I'll--" She hesitates, before she repeats her promise: "I'll stop you. For your sake. For the future's. Not Amuro's, Char's, or anyone else's!"

<Pose Tracker> Zoltan Akkanen has posed.

It takes a second to process what was said. The future is there. The future is RIGHT THERE. Rena didn't understand; She can't understand how people cling to it, how they tug at it, wanting it, needing it, desecrating it, building monuments to it, to force a vision that was never intended, to place down a false idol, call it glory, and say that was what the original outpouring of those ideals wanted all along! The past is the past, and should stay dead, only to be taken out and understood, not to be relieved!

Wordless waves dropping into the maelstrom of emotions, the wind slowly picking up as the pressure dropped. Rain. Soon. It was obvious; Anyone with experience could note when a place was ripe for a lightning strike soon enough.

"You? Stop me? You're going to stop me, Rena Lancaster!?" The emotional link was firm. Humans had connected together. And rebelled all the same, for humanity were animals trying to find their own way.

"I'll kill Amuro Ray! The White Devil doesn't deserve to live in the failed era he brought about, and the past of everything that made me will die with him!" He'll prove that he is the second coming of Char to those damn Neo-Zeon bastards!

Not Full Frontal!
Not anyone with a red suit, a mask, and a voice!
He was the one who had Char's ideals!
And his ideals screamed to take the past, to lament humanity, to scream at the world, to push them forward by severing everything that the past had to offer!

This, he screamed in his soul. This, reinforcing who he was, who he was meant to be, and the path he strode upon, one day at a time.

"Next time I see you on the battlefield, I'm not stopping at just words, lady. You set your path. I set mine."

The comms cut off.
And he began to turn away, to activate those boosters and to begin his report.

Amuro Ray was alive.
Amuro Ray must die.

<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.

It's a violent insistence from Rena: the future has to be better. They have to be able to make a better, brighter future through their actions. It's a hope that she clings to, to give her life and her actions meaning. It is more than a hope. It's a plea to the world to stop and listen to her.

The first droplets of rain start splashing against the YF-25's canopy. That brings her, briefly, out of the torrent of emotions in her mind. She can process the concern, too -- shared with Zoltan -- of a lightning strike being problematic.

She looks back at the comms.

"I will," she says, and she sounds not quite confident -- but she doesn't wilt, the way she did earlier. "Because I want to move us past this failed era!"

She swallows. She can feel his determination -- to prove himself worthy. It's met by her own: determination to not make the mistakes that her mother did, to make lives better rather than shatter them, to prove that she is her own person. To move to the future, instead.

"Next time," she agrees, as the comms cut off. Rena watches the Sinanju Stein for a moment. Then, the Prophecy's thrusters fire -- shooting it upward -- before the arms and legs fold up into its body. Once in fighter mode, it hits the afterburners -- and shoots up through the gray clouds in the blink of an eye.