2023-10-06: Let's Impress Each Other

• Log: Let's Impress Each Other
• Cast: Naoko Suzuki, Rena Lancaster
• Where: Parts Storage, Ra Mari II
• OOC - IC Date: 0097-10-06
• Summary: Having failed to check up on Rena following her ordeal, Naoko is sought out by Rena herself, and the pair discusses what happened at Denver, as well as what miracles are next for them.

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<Pose Tracker> Naoko Suzuki has posed.

It may have been a striking absence during Rena's convalescence. Despite Naoko's heartfelt and - let's be fair - foolish stunt in coming to the rescue at Denver Colony, she never once visited Rena's sickbed. She also didn't show up for Eight's baby shower, but who can say whether that was for the same reason. Either way, it could give one cause to think that for one reason or another, she's been avoiding people. Not that she's ever been the most social of butterflies, and she does keep stubbornly insisting on the fact that she isn't actually part of the crew, but still, it stands out.

It even takes a little bit more effort to find her, this time. Normally, she can be found in either her quarters or in the hangar area, often working on some sort of (usually outlandish) contraption in what has been unofficially dubbed The Nova Corner. It takes some asking around to learn that she's actually still very near her usual spot: the hangar space adjacent to it. Aside from the usual mech-sized shutters, there's a door behind her work area that she regularly uses to go in and out of there. Lately, she's been lingering there for longer periods of time.

With the door left unlocked, getting in is easy enough. There's little reason for most to ever go there, however. There's so much hangar space and not nearly enough active machines to fill it all - this particular one is just a glorified storage area, serving only as a place to dump parts that too damaged to still be of any use, but might still have salvageable materials. It's where Naoko's been getting the materials she's been working with, yielding sometimes helpful, sometimes baffling results.

As such, the place is dominated by containers containing piles upon piles of scrap. Nobody wants to actually organize any of this, or has much spare time to do much else with it. And so, when new materials aren't being moved in, it's an exceptionally quiet part of the hangar. If somebody's in there, it's easy enough to tell.

The squeaky sound of a marker is plenty to give away Naoko's position, at the far end of the junk hangar, obscured by a wall of containers that forms a room-like enclosure with only one open side. Within, a large sheet of white paper has been spread out on the ground, and bent over it sitting on her knees is Naoko, furiously scribbling away in between periodic pauses to look over sections of what she's presumably all wrote down herself. Presumably - one would be forgiven to boggle at the sheer amount of diagrams, formulas, graphs and other things that scream 'math' that she's been writing down. Even if a fellow math brain would still have to assume that's what it is, because it's nigh impossible to figure out how any of it relates to each other. Naoko must understand her own line of thinking, but most others would go cross-eyed in the attempt.

Whatever it all means, it's certainly keeping her distracted. Footsteps, for instance, would echo just as much as her marker does, and yet she doesn't appear to notice any such sounds in the slightest.

<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.

Rena, at this point, is back on her feet.

She took a lot of time to get there. More than she expected -- she always healed quickly and bounced back quickly, thanks to being a Coordinator -- but even with the best medical care in the Earth Sphere, a chest wound wasn't something she could just walk off.

She noticed that Naoko never came to visit her, though, and she has wondered. Awkwardness? Something more?

So now that she is back on her feet, she goes looking.

She slips past the containers -- and the huge piles of scrap, which draw an appreciative glance -- and then slows to a stop, as she hears the marker. She looks down at the piece of white paper spread out, boggling at all of the math on it, and then looks down at Naoko.

She smiles, despite herself. Then, she clears her throat. Then, she speaks up.

"Looks complicated," Rena says. When she speaks, there is a glimmer; the deep blue crystal just below her cockpit shines with that strange, ethereal light.

<Pose Tracker> Naoko Suzuki has posed.

What may be the expected reaction follows. Naoko throws up her hands with a shrill yelp at a voice that was just suddenly there. She turns to look over her shoulder, giving her barely enough time to give her unexpected guest a baffled glance before the marker that left her grip comes back down, bouncing off her head. "Ouch," she says reflexively, rubbing her head. If nothing else, it snapped her out of that effectively.

"Where'd you come from?" she questions, before figuring out herself that she really aught to have notice anybody entering. In which case, blame must be assigned... elsewhere. "Why didn't you say anything?" That question wasn't directed to Rena, judging by the way she's looking down at herself.

>"For real? You know you don't hear jack once you get into this stuff, right?"<

>"Well, I suppose if I were to use my emergency signal..."<

>"No way, absolutely not! My ears are still ringing from the last time."<

"...You don't have any ears," Naoko adds with a sigh, shaking her head, before finally refocusing on Rena. It's kind of nice that some people know about her Friends, banter like this does wonders to calm her down, making it easy to offer a smile, and a belated proper greeting. "Hi, Rena. Yeah, uh, don't mind any of that, just some ideas I had. It might not be anything."

That's a LOT of 'not anything', if so.

Leaving the marker where it fell, she rises to her feet, eyes immediately drawn to where the crystal remains stuck in Rena's body. There's no visible surprise - she was aware of this - though there is some measure of concern. Still, with Rena up and about like this, she can only conclude, "Good to see you're doing... well?" She still couldn't help but phrase that as a question, she can't imagine what that must feel like.

<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.

Rena lifts a hand up over her mouth, covering when she starts to giggle a little at the way the marker just bounced off Nova's head. Though, she does feel a little bad.

"I, um, came that way -- from the entrance," Rena says, pointing back at her. "And then I was sort of caught up in looking at all of this. It looks pretty amazing." Her eyes scan across all the diagrams, schematics, and math on the papers around.

She realizes it wasn't directed to her. She opens her mouth, then closes it.

"I'm doing okay!" she says. "This isn't... um. It's not bothering me too much. Not at all physically," she adds. She doesn't move with so much stiffness now; she actually walks with ease again, and the skin around the crystal isn't reddened anymore.

"How've you been?" she asks. "Have you been holed up in here for awhile...?"

<Pose Tracker> Naoko Suzuki has posed.

It's hard to deny that it looks like Rena's doing okay, though Naoko can't help but wonder if this is like her own bad habit of defaulting to 'I'm okay' and not elaborating much to keep from getting into the things that are decidedly not okay. Not exactly someone she could call anyone out on, unless she gets better about that herself. "It, uh, doesn't look super okay, if you don't mind my saying so. But I'm sure they wouldn't be letting you go off unless you were in a stable condition..."

She's staring at it again. It takes her a moment to refocus back on having a conversation. "...oh! S-sorry. It's, um. Kind of fascinating, to be honest..." This is obviously tickling her curiosity. Much like how she once wondered out loud how badly Rena would be able to break the laws of physics. Imagine the possibilities of this...

But, she was asked a question. "Oh, you know, I'm alright. Keeping busy." She glances back at the sheet full of squiggles, glad that she wasn't writing words so maybe her atrocious handwriting won't be as obvious. ...That technically counted as an answer, but she probably should explain a bit better, huh. She idly fiddles with her right braid, keeping her eyes averted as she continues.

"...I'm trying to think of a way to become stronger. This is the only way I know how. Just, theorycrafting, basically. Thinking of ways I could get more out of Sukeban." She looks back to Rena, more emotionally distraught than her expression shows. "If we'd failed to get you out of there safely, I..."

<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.

"They did a lot of tests. It... um. It can't really come out," Rena says. More accurately, it could with a complicated and potentially dangerous surgery. "And they've made sure it's secure."

She notices the staring. She can't help but notice; she gets that a lot, these days. Most people don't have crystal in their chest.

"It's okay," she says. She falls quiet for a second, then -- mouth open, then closed again when Nova says that she was trying to become stronger. And why.

"It's okay," she repeats, her voice softer. "You all were enough to get me back. More than enough. Together, all of you did it. I'm... I'm sorry I put you through that, though."

<Pose Tracker> Naoko Suzuki has posed.

"No! Why are you sorry?" Naoko blurts out, shaking her head. "I didn't even know what I was doing! I could have... I could have made everything worse!"

Nobody would argue that her approach was exactly normal. Not even on the Newtype level of normal. Just like when Gryps II was about to fire, she effectively put her 'self' into Rena's machine. She really doesn't understand how she's doing that, but desperate situations evidently prompt her to act this way, regardless. Which leads her to only one conclusion, which she presents with copious emphatic gestures.

"You have to... you have to purge the Gaia Gear's OS! Do a clean rewrite from scratch-- no, that's not enough. I can't know anything about it - you have to completely replace the cockpit block. Because... because if you don't, I'll keep doing this, I'll keep ending up breaking into your machine, and it's only a matter of time before my attempts to help you will end up hurting you instead! I can't... I'd never forgive myself."

Her frantic yelling peters out as she seems to lose all her energy, hanging her head in shame. "...I'm so sorry. I said I'd stop doing things to your machine without asking, but no matter how much I try, I guess I'm just... incapable of keeping that promise."

<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.

"I--"

There are a lot of reasons for Rena to apologize, she thinks. Even if everyone has told her this is not her fault, that she shouldn't apologize, they still come to mind. She hesitates, and looks down for a moment.

She shakes her head.

"That's not true," she says, before she looks back up. "Maybe you've hacked in a couple of times. And I won't say you should watch it, in the middle of a fight. But you've made a lot of improvements. And... back then, when I was trapped in there..."

Rena shakes her head firmly again. "That wasn't ordinary circumstances, Nova," she says. "You were all doing whatever you could to get me out of there. The changes you've made... they've made the Gaia Gear Alpha better."

She puts a hand over her heart; over, coincidentally, the shard of blue Psychoframe in her chest.

"The Gaia Gear Alpha came online, in the middle of the fight. Before that, I was... floating, inside a crystal cage. It was turned off," Rena says. "I don't think it was all you. But I think you helped it. It wanted to get me out of there, too. And... I think, if you hadn't helped it -- then, and before -- then... I don't know if it could have helped all of you get me out of there."

<Pose Tracker> Naoko Suzuki has posed.

It was never more obvious than right now how strongly Naoko can react when she's being addressed as Nova. She looked absolutely miserable and repentant, right up until she heard that name. That caused her to sharply look up, eyes widened, seemingly much more receptive to what she's being told. Whatever the reason for that, this may have been for the best, in this particular instance. Even if she does swing kind of hard the other way, looking prideful as she places a hand on her chin.

"...Well yes, they were pretty brilliant, weren't they," she agrees on the matter of her improvements. She did believe that to begin with, it was just hard to focus on that aspect, in light of all the ways she'd since considered in which something could have gone wrong. She shrugs with some measure of exaggeration, continuing, "That's the thing though isn't it - circumstances are never ordinary when a Miracle Worker is involved."

She fishes a PaPPy stick out of the box in her hoodie's pocket, using it to point in Rena's direction. "Still, regardless of what I did or didn't do - I have to do better. If I can't stop myself from turning to extreme measures because nothing else I can do is good enough, then clearly I need better options, wouldn't you say? And so..." Placing the candy in the corner of her mouth, she spreads both arms wide, gesturing to her work in 'theorycrafting', her point self-evident.

With one finger pressed against the end of the PaPPy stick, she closes her eyes, and takes the boisterous edge off her voice. "...Seriously though. This is how I can do the most good, in the long run. So I just have to keep at it, until I find the answer that's right for me." With a crunch, she bites the candy in half, holding what remains between two fingers, and continues speaking in between chewing.

"Even I haven't yet managed to meet my own standards as a Miracle Worker, you know. It's important to be fully aware of your capabilities, as well as your limitations. Can't say I've got a great handle on either, as of yet."

<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.

It's not lost on Rena how she reacts differently to being called Nova. Strange, she thinks, even if it makes her glad that she did so.

"They were," Rena agrees, with a slight smile -- and falls quiet after a moment. She listens as Nova explains, eyes on the PaPPy stick pointed at her, then down at the schematics. "They were a pretty extreme set of circumstances. Even if... we find ourselves in those more than I would like."

She scratches at the back of her head, before she looks at Naoko, and tilts her head to the side.

"It's okay if you think you need to push yourself harder. Just... don't push yourself until you burn out. And try to be fair to yourself, too," Rena says. "You've worked more than a few miracles. Don't talk yourself out of those being miracles, okay? Even if you want to do better, it doesn't make what you've done stop counting."

<Pose Tracker> Naoko Suzuki has posed.

Nova pops the rest of the candy in her mouth, munching away while Rena is talking. "Right," she agrees before swallowing. "I figure things are probably gonna keep escalating in that regard. I don't think that's pessimistic, it's just... where the pattern's going." She closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath. "...I'll be careful. It's just that, for once, I'd like to actually feel prepared to handle things."

Her confident grin is back by the time she opens her eyes. "Yeah, I know, I know. Thing is, there's a lot of folks out there who can still outdo me on the Miracle scale. I can't let that stand, whether they're miracles that need to be opposed, or it's just healthy competition between friends." She returns her attention to her work, briefly sinking into thought before she continues. "Working miracles on the fly is all well and good, but if I have a sound hypothesis to work from..."

She crosses her arms, shaking her head as she turns back to Rena. "I feel like I'm betraying my principles a little bit with this approach. If a Miracle is this meticulously planned out, can it still be called a Miracle? Even if the results are miraculous, when you know exactly how it works... hnn..." She mulls this over for barely a second or two before reaching a conclusion, shrugging. "Ah well. I suppose I'll consider it fair enough as long as the end result is a particularly impressive Miracle."

Another PaPPy stick is withdrawn and pointed at Rena. "I'm willing to bet you'll understand where I'm coming from better than ever before long. As they say, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I think in your case, it's gonna end up being quite literal, once you figure out how to use that thing in your chest." She picks precisely that moment she judges might be unbalancing to toss the candy stick Rena's way. Catch!

Regardless of the result, she finishes that thought, with all due seriousness. "Don't tell me you hadn't considered that. You know what Psychoframe can do, don't you?"

<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.

"Yeah. For awhile, at least. Hopefully, we'll get a breather at some point," Rena says with a sigh, her shoulders slumping a little. But that's more being tired than exhausted. She smiles, though, and she looks at Nova, as her eyes open and she grins.

"A-A sound hypothesis?" she says, her eyebrows lifting. "Um--I mean. I guess that's true. A miracle is, by definition, something you don't expect. But... I think it's also something you can practice. Practicing being ready for the unexpected, I guess."

The candy is tossed. Rena grabs it, one handed, with those usual lightning reflexes. Her eyebrows lift.

"I'd be lying to say I haven't thought about it," Rena says. "It is Psychoframe, after all. Part of the Gaia Gear Alpha's Psychoframe," she clarifies. "I can already kind of... feel my Mobile Suit."

She pauses for a moment. "I'm not sure, though. I know what it can do... and I know it can be used for good. I've done that. But I want to be careful about it, too. Especially because I'm connected to it."

<Pose Tracker> Naoko Suzuki has posed.

Nova doesn't say it, but the look she gives Rena pretty much says 'not holding my breath'. The last crisis situations have barely been resolved and new ones are already here. Some of which she's seriously considering getting personally involved with, but that's neither here nor there, for the moment.

"A practiced Miracle..." she laments what she's been reduced to, pressing the fingers of her right hand against her forehead, thinking to herself out loud. "As long as it's not too predictable, I suppose. Better to only have a solid starting point and keep things fluid from there... a plan with a blurred outline could be enough keep people guessing."

She grins at the deft catch. Looks like Rena isn't so easy to unbalance. She celebrates this by 'toasting' another candy stick to Rena, before biting into it, calmly listening to the point of view of the one who actually has that crystal stuck in her body.

"Well there you go," she begins, idly tossing up and catching the remaining half of the candy in her hand as she speaks. "You couldn't ask for a more natural interface. Yeah, obviously you wouldn't go into anything planning to take any big risks, but..." She spreads her arms wide. "Look at what I ended up doing. Best be prepared for that."

With a casual motion, she makes as if to pop the rest of the candy into her mouth... and ends up missing entirely. What would normally be a barely perceptible sound is augmented a little in this empty room, making the small object sound like a dropped pencil. Naoko lowers her hand, silently observing its involuntary shaking for a moment, before closing it into a fist. Her voice has dropped in volume considerably when she finds her voice again.

"...In the end, what choice do we have? Once you're aware of it, it's too late to pretend it doesn't exist. All you can do is figure out as much as you can, so it won't take you by surprise." She isn't just talking about Rena's crystal anymore. A universal truth, as far as she's concerned.

<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.

"I-It's not all bad!" Rena says, with a slightly awkward laugh. "Think of it as... um... an extended miracle, maybe?"

She doesn't sound so convinced, though.

She opens the candy, having a bite of it as Nova explains more. She wrinkles her nose a little -- and then she cracks a smile, and nods. "Yeah," she agrees. "I'll have to be ready for that. Who knows what you'll get up to, hm?"

She hesitates, for a moment, and then she nods. "You're right. There's no sense in running from it -- this, or anything else. We can't make it go away. Powers like Psychoframe... they're out there, now. We just have to use them responsibly."

She hesitates, a moment. "And make sure others don't misuse them, either, as best we're able."

<Pose Tracker> Naoko Suzuki has posed.

Naoko's short moment of hesitation matches Rena, before she nods in affirmation. "...Yeah." No more needs to be said, by her reckoning. As soon as she makes that call, she lets out a deep breath.

"Haah... got a little serious there, huh? Sorry, sorry. This is why I need to keep busy, I'll have so many thoughts if you give me half a chance. What matters is, we're both okay, and we're gonna stay that way. Right?"

She glances to the ground, then bends down, retrieving her marker with one hand and the fallen candy with the other. There isn't even time to think 'is she going to--' before she's already put the candy in her mouth, and smiling unconcernedly about it. Doesn't matter it was on the floor, she won't let it go to waste! Yes, she has a huge supply of this stuff, that's beside the point.

"Anyway," she smoothly continues without remarking on any of that, "I'll show you once I've got something to show for my efforts, and hope you will do the same! Let's impress each other!"

<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.

"Aah, it's all right. Sometimes, we've gotta be serious," Rena says, with a smile on her face. "It's important to make sure others know exactly where we stand. And I say this as a so-called Newtype."

Someone who is supposed to be better at understanding people, without trying. The act of explaining oneself, though, is too important to be forgotten.

Though, her smile breaks into a wide-eyed stare when Naoko eats floor candy. She recovers quickly.

"Count on it. I want to see what you come up with," Rena says. "And I'll... I'll do my best." She nods her head. "...Anyways. We should get some food in you, I think. Some not-candy food."