2022-10-28: Questions Long Held

• Log: 2022-10-28: Questions Long Held
• Cast: Sayla Mass, Guy Shishioh
• Where: ShouRyu
• OOC - IC Date: 0096-10-28
• Summary: Guy learns who Heart-2 really is.

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<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.

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She asks Guy for his help. "Of course, Sayla," he says, and recovers more toward a grin. "I want to help all of them, too."

...but he does stop walking, just as they round the corner into the extremely convenient vacant lot containing the Entire Jet Fighter that is Vehicle Mode ShouRyu. "But..I think I do think I need to know, by now. I understand secret organizations, trust me. The whole Gutsy Geoid Guard was one, remember? But it's become big enough I should ask."

He meets her gaze.

"Who," he asks, "is Heart-2?"

Sayla's eyes widen.

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The OP hits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv53de32u4w
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        Sayla's shoulders sag a bit. It was inevitable really. The alliance hadn't been this big or active until recently. "Hey, Shouryu," she asks, looking up at the Neon Green Fighter Jet. "I need you to keep this a secret, okay?"

        There'd always been a sense of theater when her predecessors had done it. But it's hard to do a flourish with one arm in a cast and your heart in a dumpster. "...You're right. You do deserve to know." She fumbles for a something in her jacket. She pulls it out. A playing card- but not the one she showed Guy tghe first time they met in Tsutsujidai.

        It's the two of hearts, but eash heart is embellished in the manner of the King of Hearts Shuffle Crest. It's also metallic, and seeming with an encrypted near field communication field. She holds it up with two fingers.

        "Heart-2 of the Shuffle Alliance, in the flesh." Sayla's voice is a little more... military now as she shifts postures a little. "Shall we talk here, Chief Shishioh? Or on the way?"

<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

ShouRyu's canopy lights up at syllable breaks when he says, "Not a problem at all, Doc!"

Guy knows ShoRyu is dependable, even if a little high-strung. He still watches Sayla pull that card out. It seems like it makes her straighten up. Get some strength in her posture. Maybe she needs that? Maybe it's the opposite. He's called for it now, either way. Eyeing the card, his Evoluder senses feel it. "NFC," he notes. "Facilities access? No, that's a codec." His eyes slide to her. "Communications. That's not just a calling card."

He knew it was her, of course - and so did she, giving so much more than she needed to, to answer his real question.. "Let's speak on the way," he says. "ShouRyu, drop the ladder!"

Soon, there's the low roar of an Ul-Tech Engine as ShouRyu takes off completely vertically, and then soars for the docks. Guy doesn't wait too long past that.

"Shuffle Alliance. That's Domon Kasshu and his four buddies from the Gundam Fight, right?" He scratches his head. "I missed that whole thing, obviously. But I thought it was just, like, a team name."

<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.

        In the passenger seat of ShouRyu, Sayla... relaxes. Just a little. "...That's how we prefer people to think of us." She's put the card away now, but it stopped registering to his Evoluder senses as soon as she let go of it. "But... They're the second group of Crest Holders I've worked with. The second 'Shuffle Alliance' I've worked with, I suppose." She lets out a sigh. Guy's kept her secrets so far... and they need each other. "But as far as I know, they go back further than the Dark Ages."

        This is a technically true statement. "And Heart-2 is the person whose been holding the organization together since the last crest holders were killed purifying 'Domon's buddies'." There's some real resentment there in Sayla's voice. She can't hide all her bitterness. "Maybe things could have turned out differently if they had been here..."

<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

"Huh. I see." Guy hums.

"Kinda like the old SDC, yeah?" ShouRyu pipes in.

"Surprised you know about that," Guy notes.

"I can read and download!" ShouRyu says, like he's boasting.

Guy chuckles, and turns his attention back toward Sayla, half-glancing backward. ShouRyu's doing all the driving, anyway. "I see. So you've been in this the whole time..." Is this another person he hasn't been helping?

No, he reminds himself. He flexes his hand, the suit he wore to see Renais feeling confining. He can't...physically, he can't be everyone's salvation. This is something Sayla's a part of because she believes in it.

It takes him a second to work up to it, but he smiles, quiet, eventually. "Maybe," he says. "But we can't count on maybe. I'm sure, if they're the kinds of people I suspect, they gave themselves up partly because they knew you'd be able to hold it together for long enough."

He flicks a comm line, because turning fully around in his seat is hard for even Guy Shishioh. A monitor displays the other's face for both of them.

"Still. Sounds like it's time for Heart-2 to take a break, if you ask me. How's the next generation coming?"

<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.

        "Only since around Gryps." That's still nine years or so- and most of the time she's known Guy. Sayla smirks at ShouRyu's comment. "A little bit, yeah." Sayla pauses, though, a tightness in her chest. Because they believed in her, huh? "...Maybe you're right but..."

        She grips the handle of her seat. "But they might have been trying to clean up the mess they failed to see coming." She slumps, then, as Guy tells her she needs a break. "...The last time I let myself take a break, the Axis Shock happened. I can't leave it all to other people, Guy. I can't." It says so much, but here, in this tiny space, with no newtypes to hear her true heart, she can speak.

        "...Not well. The only one of them with any leadership experience is a space pirate. George could maybe step up, but he hasn't. Chibodee defers to me and wants to play bodyguard. Sai spends half his time in his temple and Domon is.... somewhere. And so... I'm what they have left." She sounds angry, as she tries to bury it. Still...

        "...Guy. What do you know about the Devil Gundam incident and the people behind it?"

<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

"Maybe. I do know Master Asia was at the center of the whole thing, and he held the role Domon holds now, right?" Guy's having to muddle through; the Gundam Fight, the Devil Gundam, the whole thing is...well, it literally didn't happen to him. It's tough to wrap your head around something that convoluted that you didn't experience, sometimes.

"I understand what you mean, Sayla. But even Taiga made sure he could offload enough to run an entire company while also being GGG's Chief. If you don't have that much, you're just understaffed."

He doesn't follow that one up yet. So the new Shuffles aren't really stepping up...it sounds like they never expected to become what they have. Alright...

"Almost nothing," he says, simply. "It comes up, sometimes. It was some kinda rogue nanomachine colony, right?"

<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.

        Sayla nods. "He was." She doesn't say more, until Guy's point. "...We weren't before Master Asia killed most of the old organization." Her voice is flat, and harsh. She's tempering the tone, but none of the anger in it.

        The problem isn't a lack of manpower, either. It's a lack of command. It's bad enough she has to put things in the hands of a sixteen year old sub captain. It feels *wrong* to her. Like she's doing the thing she was working against the whole time. "We didn't have a secret backup space. We had people with experience. I didn't even start piloting again after Axis." The event most prominent in her mind.

        "It was built to regenerate the earth, it even planned to until someone tried to subvert the project and it's self defence protocols engaged. But it could be controlled, or directed. Master Asia had decided that humanity had been too cruel to Earth, and he would recover it by wiping them out in the process." Sayla is sort of staring forward now, not really looking at the monitor. "The same conclusion Char had come to less than a year later."

<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

Ah. So it's the betrayal at the root of it. Hm. Hmm.

Guy doesn't have quite the right kind of brainwave to parse all of Sayla's emotions here, but he thinks the frustration tied directly to the betrayal...no, the two betrayals, is part of it. He thinks he has a sense of what needs to happen, but...He strokes his chin a bit, keeping his hands busy since he can't push any of ShouRyu's delightful buttons.

"I see. You lost the leadership and had to take over. OK," is what he says, acknowledging without probing yet.

"...seems like a thought that's just out there, now. Deus had a similar idea..." who the hell is Deus?? But he shakes his head. "I can see it being seductive. Break everything, start over. Heck, Hell and Heaven works that way. But it also protects. It preserves the most precious part. ...sorry, maybe I'm just thinking out loud."

He slumps back in his seat.

ShouRyu chimes in, the monitors blinking in time with his voice. "It's not right," he says, earnest. "That's not Courage. That's giving up! And it's letting yourself think it's OK to give up!"

A smile blooms on Guy's face, as ShouRyu clears Tsutsujidai's dock and starts to boost toward Orbit Base. "Correct, ShouRyu. Well said."

Then Guy turns around, actually physically moving to see Sayla, despite the comms gear. He can all but feel that distant gaze, and he meets it when he finds her eyes with a fierce solidity. "Sayla," he says, firmly. "You can't make that mistake either." He lets it sit there, then adds: "I'm not talking about...destroying mankind. I'm talking about you, and your dreams. The ambition you're standing for by carrying that card with you. The courage in your heart that still believes that there's something worth protecting."

<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.

        Sayla chooses not to probe. "...But it doesn't mend anything. Starting from nothing means going through all the mistakes we've made, with none of the knowledge. It's the easy solution from people who aren't going to have to see through what comes after." ShouRyu chimes in, and she nods. "Yeah. It's giving in. It's walking away from the long, slow work that's needed for an easy 'win' that solves nothing."

        And then Guy catches her off guard, and it shows with the surprise on her face. She looks down. "I'm pretty sure you're supposed to shout that speech, Guy. Point dramatically, perhaps." It's deflection, she knows it is.
r "Maybe quote Article 5 or whatever it was at me."

<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

"I'm Acting Chief now. Sometimes it takes the inside voice," Guy says, with that kind smile of his. "But I'll do you one better on the Charter."

He turns back into his seat, and says, "Library," and his G-Stone keens as he remotely connects to the GGG Database.

"Sayla, you don't need King of Braves Guy Shishioh, the man who hits all his problems with a hammer that turns them into light. But I think you do need some advice from Chief Guy Shishioh, who's been helping to run an anti-kaiju operation with a soul from inside the NERV apparatus for most of a year. I've been taking lessons from what I remember, from what Shigeru and Yang and Prickle have taught me."

"Sayla....you gotta hire some people." His look into the camera is completely serious. "The Gutsy Geoid Guard staffed itself with some of the smartest people alive on one government's dime. This is a problem that's been solved before. The people you need don't need to be grown in a garden colony. You just have to be willing to find them."

He pushes his hand against the monitor, and with an Evolual chime from his G-Stone, data starts to flow onto Sayla's screen.

"This is the contact information for Ayame and Tsuguo Ushiyama. They're GGG Blue, technically, but they're semi-retired due to having a kid. They're rambunctious, but I'll trust them to my back any day."

"That one? He was a Zonder victim. Worked for the Britannian air force. Pretty sure he's in logistics now."

"Here. This is Sakura Isogai. Right now she's the secretary for a PZ politician named Hearts Clover. They can't stand him because he makes them actually stick to their campaign promises, and he has the spine to do that because of Isogai. Back in the old days, she was Taiga's secretary. Half the time she was running the Space Development Corporation basically herself, while he was busy."

He turns again, to face her head-on again. He's grinning. "Yang tells me this is called networking. Sayla, you convinced yourself this was intractable. It's not."

He amps it down to a more tender smile. "You just have to believe in people again."

<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.

        She can't help but shake her head with a sigh on this. Still, she tenses a little. "Guy, with all due respect I've been running a charity for nearly 15 years-" Sayla is in fact, about to feel fully patronized until...

        ...She is fully and clearly delivered a conversation knockout blow. She stares in disbelief. If they passed 3G's standards, they were sure to pass hers. It really is that easy, huh.

        "...You're a smug bastard when you're right, Shishioh." There's affection in her voice. A little frustration, too, but affection. "...Thank you, Guy. I'll look into them. Even if I am a bit concerned about pulling a positive influence from Partiya Zaftra."

        'You just have to believe in people again.'

        Sayla falls silent, looking down. Eventually, she responds. "Easier said than done." Too many betrayals, too many personal failings.

        'If that's not enough. Then what will it take?'

        "I wish I could. Then maybe Leina wouldn't have to worry so much."

<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

"Funny, Sho used to tell me that, too," Guy quips.

...maybe a dark joke. He's still got a faint smile on his face, though. He'd rather remember him as the friend he was.

He lets Sayla sort through the information he's given her, the slight shock to her system he's applied. His point wasn't necessarily that she'd done wrong, just that...she'd allowed herself to believe the walls were too high. "You're welcome, Sayla," he says, brightly. Ah, but...

"...I know. Trust me, I do, actually." He scratches the side of his neck, watching as the Orbital Ring just starts to be visible as they cruise through the void. "Felt like I was going crazy when Renais and Alouette vanished. Started remembering all the times I'd seen people I care about turn on me. ...or been forced to turn on them." ... he shakes his head out. "A little different, I guess. But it's easy to find yourself in a hole where you forget there even is an exit. That there really are people out there who really do want to help you. I can't be part of this Shuffle Alliance, not right now. But I do want to see you looking less like the world's crashing down around your ears. And you know how hard I fight for things I want, Sayla."

He grins, toothy and friendly. "I'm here," he says, with full sincerity. "Just start with trusting me, OK?"

<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.

        Sayla's very quiet for a while. Like she's processing it all. Leina's been trying so hard for years, and since he returned, so has Guy. Koji and Sayaka too.

        And she's done all she can to redirect that effort towards others.

        Finally, she speaks up. "I know you do. And I know you go all out to keep your promises." She breathes out. "...I can do that."

        And with any luck she can.