2022-12-11: Marangoni Effect

• Cast: C.C., Shelby Korts
• Where: Tsutsujidai: North Floodgate
• Date: U.C. 0096 12 11
• Summary: A misbehaving witch tickles spacetime just enough to deposit a Shelby for a little while.

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<Pose Tracker> C.C. has posed.

        The northern point of infrastructure in Tsutsujidai is a place most in it don't like to talk about. It's 'haunted', but not in a cool sense. More of an existential dread sense. This little pocket of a space that lived for such a long time - to its residents - having this barren expanse of. . . uncertainty at its frontier feels odd. It's the 'wilderness', but there's nothing natural about it. Miles and miles of a 'blank' feeling landscape - from the north floodgate, little but a vast collection pool and soil that's only just begun to see plantlife inhabit it.

        ...It's here that C.C.'s 'experimenting', therefore.

        The green-haired maiden, clad in that clingy white straitjacket she favors, does very little physically - but does a lot on other spectrums. She's a vast psychic beacon, glimmering and calling out brightly, loudly, and consistently. Getting here is getting through several miles of uninhabited suburb, then several more miles of wreckage.

        At a cottage overlooking the floodgate, she lazes upon a couch, shielded from the constant rain by the remnants of the roof, staring placidly into the waters...

<Pose Tracker> Shelby Korts has posed.

        "Contact. I'm reading atmosphere beyond the door. It's breathable. Probably old, but breathable."

        Lowering herself into a kneel, Shelby Korts is clad in shades of black and purple, athletics goggles snugly secured to her face rather than her usual pair of glasses. Glancing down at the small device in the palm of her hand, the door opens with a hiss and a creak of it's hinges; sections are unsealed, air rushing from compartment to compartment. Striding through the door, she clicks on a small hands-free light clipped to the shoulder of her normal suit.

        She's still pretty far out from her target location, but this is the safest way to make it to her goal without being noticed-- travelling the streets with low to no lights, cutting through buildings and security stations to make sure that roads and obstructions were clear.

        Entering the small office, she reaches for a set of keys left long-abandoned and caked with dust on the rack.

        Then, rain.

        Twisting around, Shelby finds herself standing amid a world of wreckage and water and distant, unfamiliar cities. The only thing she can hear is herself, breathing, hand still reached out to collect the keys from storage that is no longer there.

        It's like psychic tinnitus. She twists, seeing the cottage, feeling ... everything. This place, this atmosphere, this world-- This isn't just her memories. This isn't her powers playing tricks on her: This is real.

        In the next moment, she bursts through the door of the cottage to get out of the rain, looking incredibly out of place right now.

        "H-Hello-?"

<Pose Tracker> C.C. has posed.

        "You can be a -little- more careful with the door, can't you?" C.C. raises a hand from her languid position, head slowly twisting to observe her first visitor. The beacon of psychic noise shuts off abruptly, like a lightbulb burning out - though the resonance of it likely lingers in the mind's eye for a while. "I was rather accustomed to the quiet here, so-"

        The witch pauses, seeing the first visitor to come. First looking at her - then . . . into her.

        A smile cracks on her lips.

        ((Well well~ It's been quite some time. Fancy seeing you here. Though I recognize you more by...let's call it 'smell'. I take it you're here just to see what the big boiling light is here in scenic Tsutsujidai? Tragically, it's nothing important. I really did just want to see who came.))

        ...It's a familiar voice, distantly. That intrusive entity who was a pestering problem during the Behemoth's rampage...

<Pose Tracker> Shelby Korts has posed.

        The ringing in her brain stops almost instantly; there's still a strange lingering sensation of a place she had been before -- but she dare not speak it aloud just yet.

        She's inside, looking around at the layout of the building and already looking for signs of an ambush, or people. The remnants of the roof holding things together, shielding areas of the house, and -- and that voice. That woman. "Nnh--"

        The voice in her head.

                The witch in her head.

        ((You're that woman--))

        Shelby's hand snaps to the small of her back, but nothing's there. But no, this-- is this some kind of trick? A trap? She's alone, in the middle of nowhere, and this place is ... it would be difficult to mount some kind of elaborate ruse at a place like this, right? At floodgates?

        Her mouth falls to a flat line, brow creased with irritation. Shelby moves to the window, looking outside to confirm her surroundings.

        ((So ... I'm... in Tsutsujidai...?))

        Her head turns, disconnecting the valve hose of her suit from the helmet and pulling it off with a firm tug. Pink hair that could use a touch-up, a slight adjustment of her goggles, and -- she doesn't look like some kind of battle-hardened veteran of any conflict, that's for sure. She could pass for a student, even.

        "Why did you bring me here? How did you bring me here?"

<Pose Tracker> C.C. has posed.

        Mercifully, C.C. does elect to actually use her lips going forward - if anything, where it was once very loud and bright, this space suddenly becomes...quite quiet? Her ability to 'shut off' is unnaturally strong in its own right.

        "Hmmmm. Well, I didn't bring 'you' here. You came here, of course. Many people came. Tsutsujidai is calling out in many ways...I just wanted to do my own little spot of calling, to separate out the wheat from the chaff."

        Slowly, the witch spins over onto her tummy, chin upon her hands, legs kicking idly at the air. "Have you been to this place before? It's been quite 'heavy' for some time up here in the stars. At this juncture however, it's taking its own breaths. Where once this was a god and her domain, we now have a girl and a world, both in pain, both in two different ways. It's interesting, isn't it? I can only imagine this entire place - being so crowded where everything matters, being so full of emotion now - is liable to be harder for someone as 'open' as you. The very raindrops are like tears. Surely you'd like shelter from them?~""

        The grin curls wider, cattier. "...Maybe you'll wind up depending on me to cover your cute little ears, mhmhmhm."

<Pose Tracker> Shelby Korts has posed.

        Standing at the window for a few moments longer, Shelby's eyes close, then she lets out a sigh. She's here, then, for real. For what qualifies as 'real,' at least in her broad definition of the word. Shelby's suit shoes pad against the floor, turning away from the window and facing the green-haired young woman. She stays back from C.C., guarded and cautious. Her thoughts are just as easy to read as it is for her to read others-- 'Is she ... enjoying this?'

        A heavy sigh follows. She surrenders to it, head tilting a little. "Once."

        "I woke up here once. When I left, I woke up ... at home, but not ... where I was. I thought I was crazy until I realized I had a cup."

        Tucking her helmet under her arm, Shelby's head turns to look back toward the city through the desolation and the distance, squinting her eyes a bit. Her hand lifts to shield her eyes from light, even.

        "Do you always talk in... ugh. I ... yes. It feels different from last time. Before it was like ... like when it's so quiet you just hear, like. ... noise, but now it's ... I can't explain it." Maybe she's right -- maybe this whole world is crying as one girl. What would she think...? That Akane girl she met the last time she was here?

        One more glance is fired back at C.C. while her legs kick. The smile, the absolute delight in all of this...

        ((... Who are you?))

<Pose Tracker> C.C. has posed.

        "Of course I'm enjoying this, silly." C.C. muses, as soon as it's made manifest in Shelby's thoughts. "I don't make a habit of getting myself wrapped up in affairs that have nothing to offer me, after all."

        With a limber spring of her spine, C.C. fluidly rises to her feet, passing by Shelby to take in the more visually 'stimulating' view of the rest of Tsutsujidai. Lit up, if humbly. Some areas brighter - some areas dim - some lights shifting. The witch shields her eyes a little bit, one hand over her forehead like a visor.

        "You're hearing that 'shell' of noise crack. It was insulation, you see. Someone who was so sick and tired of the loudness of the world that she made a pact with a devil to shut it all away. I've been keeping tabs on it precisely because of what a strange curse - a strange miracle - this entire place is. A testament to the contorting power of one spirit - or perhaps the investment in human spirit that those with contorting power have."

        ((It's a little worrying when you two are so similar.))

        With a hand at her hip, C.C. parks her irresponsibly flaunted bottom upon the postbox just outside the ruined little house, one knee hiked up to rest her chin upon. "It'd take me a while to answer that. I could give you what I've been telling everyone here, that I'm Shiranui Shirome of Tsutsujidai High's Class 2-C. It's a joke only I find funny, you see. Maybe if you make up a story based on your impressions of me so far, I'll use that instead."

<Pose Tracker> Shelby Korts has posed.

        She moves in a way that borders on unnatural, at least to Shelby's eyes. Is she truly a cat in human skin? Shelby follows C.C. with her gaze; then follows C.C.'s gaze out to the terrain again, adjusting the fit of the prescription goggles strapped to her face.

        "So this isn't just ... like, a different world. This is just a place that was created by someone." Even just saying it sounds ridiculous. A shell of a world, the breakdown...

        Shelby frowns. Someone powerful enough to create all this, alongside some sort of devil. The young woman looks down, pangs of guilt and time and memory practically radiating from her.

        ((I wouldn't ever shut myself away like this. Hiding doesn't solve anything.))

<Pose Tracker> C.C. has posed.

        "Well, it's a bit more complicated than that, but also exactly like that," C.C. muses, reaching out towards the humble skyline of Tsutsujidai, one that barely perks up above the surrounding hills.

        Quickly at that emeanaton of regret, C.C.'s hand finds the underside of Shelby's chin, cupping it rather aggressively and tipping forward. Locked eyes. Locked fingers.

        ((Everyone has thoughts that noble. That 'good for them'.))

        ((The reason temptation works is that iron-clad willpower isn't all that sustainable.))

        ((If you wanted, I could cloak you in a comfortable little bubble not too dissimilar from this right now~))

<Pose Tracker> Shelby Korts has posed.

        Shelby's eyes lock on C.C.'s, caught in the woman's grasp. It isn't her physical strength that is intimidating or overwhelming, but her raw presence-- and even if she remains resolved, there's still a bit of nervousness inside the young woman's blue eyes. She's off-balanced. She's in another place that is not her own. She's in another whole world that is not her own, and she does not know her way around.

        She has no idea if she can get back on her own.

        ((I-- I'm not...))

        Her mouth tries to get into a taut line, through the mild squish of her cheeks.

        ((I'll pass. I don't have anything to hide from.))

        Tell that to the feeling inside her: The feeling of something dead and gone and haunting all the same: Memories, of a dead Britannian girl with red hair and big round glasses.

<Pose Tracker> C.C. has posed.

        The siege of Shelby's cheeks continues. Muni. Munimuni. Squishsquish. C.C. is truly relentless in this theater of war.

        ((Now now now. Surely you realize by now just how porous your mind is, and how easy it is for me to flow through all its gaps like water. But then - no, you probably do realize it. It's terrible, isn't it? That you have to hide things so fiercely that you're acclimated to lie even to someone who can see them plain as day. Like someone on fire refusing a drop of water.))

        Mercifully, she releases her grip on the girl though, and also stops beaming every word into her head - the witch seems to delight in oscillating between those voices. "...You've only been here once or twice though, then, and it's easy for you to get lost? Hmm. Since everyone's stuck here, that's a little bit tricky. Looks like I'll have to show you around. Depending on who your friends are, you may have more help than you realize over however long we're trapped - as we speak, I'm shirking a particularly large congregation of the gathered since it was a liiiiittle loud for my tasting."

        "Since I'm rather peckish though, I think we'll start by touring scenic Tsutsujidai's local delicacies instead."

        And with that, she's grasped Shelby by the hand, practically pulling her along towards the clusters of lights at the town's core...

<Pose Tracker> Shelby Korts has posed.

        Much as she would like to deny it, her dreams -- half-remembered memories layered through her unconscious mind -- have gaps large enough to drive a truck through. Rita certainly found a way in; that much she is certain of... she thinks. It was too real. And the psychoframe--

        -- psychoframe-- could this have been--

        But none was active nearby? None that she knows of-- her own Mobile Suit's shuttered still, and there was no sign of any machine like the Unicorn in the vicinity when she left on this excursion.

        Still, C.C. seems to have shaken something inside her. Her dreams
                        
                        Her memories
                        Herself
                        Her grip on reality

slither and bubble to the surface, far too many like broken glass glued together the wrong way.

        ((Stay out of my head.)) She said it once before to C.C., but far more fiercely than the somber tone of thought Shelby does now.

        "I can't stay here. I have to get back-- what are you--"

        And then, clutching her helmet tightly, she's pulled along the way and not quite sure what to do next.