2023-06-17: Owed Explanations

• Log: 2023-06-17- Owed Explanations
• Cast: Akane Shinjo, Sayla Mass, Judau Ashta
• Where: Tsutsujidai - Junk Shop "Aya" - Junkyard
• OOC - IC Date: 0097-06-17
• Summary: When Judau Ashta comes to get parts to repair the ZZ Gundam at Aya, he gets more than he was expecting: Sayla Mass and Akane Shinjo! Akane owes him an explanation of what really happened at Dakar and what's happening with Leina, so she does her best to give it to him. ... shockingly, she manages to explain it in a way he gets.

---

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

The fun thing about a junk shop: it has junk in it! And junk behind it!

(And Junk in it, but that's a whole separate thing.)

Rikka and her mom have been handling the shop interior, which means it's Akane's turn to handle the larger-scale junk. Qivi's been a big help in getting that mess into neater order lately -- but Qivi's working inside too, today.

The actual fully-intact mobile suits are hidden under a mix of tarps and junk, but there's a lot of parts and gear hanging around. Akane herself is seated next to a particularly large stack of field motors, staring out at the city through a gap in all the junk.

"God, I don't wanna tell Hinoki or Swan this stuff," she mumbles to herself. She knows Permanence is right, of course, and she for-real needs to say it, not least because if it gets any worse it's going to affect her performance when she gets back to operations duties. ... but it involves exposing a part of herself she doesn't particularly like still being a thing.

Pinching the bridge of her nose, she does her best to buoy her mood. She can hold it together until they close up shop, at least.

<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.

        It's been a long time since Sayla Mass had crashed on someone else's couch.

        After staying for dinner, she spent some time catching up with the staff of Tsutsujidai's Yumi Foundation office- from an off duty perspective. Some light checking up on people from the shelters. Offering to take Orie out for drinks last night, so Rikka and Akane could have the house to themselves for a bit. And to actually spend some time with someone her own age without bad news to send.

        That ended up with Sayla crashing on the couch for a second night.

        Today, though, she had booked an afternoon flight back home. There were things she had to sort out, sooner rather than later.

        Later was still a few hours away, though. She stepped out of the cafe with a coffee in hand, out into the junk yard. There weren't exactly outside tables, but it wasn't standing out on the street with a capuccino- or crowding the shop with three people working.

        She glances around the junkyard, her eyes tracking to that gap. She looks for something to give a quick knock on the motor tower. "Good morning," She says, after knocking. "How are you doing?"

<Pose Tracker> Judau Ashta has posed.

What's a former junk trader to do when they need to fix up their high-performance mobile machine with a weapon of mini-mass destruction stapled to its forehead?

Trade some junk, of course!

This is a good idea. Judau knows what he's doing; trust him.

...

Trust him specifically to know the value of junk better than most.

This brings us to NOW, at the junk yard of Aya! The truth of the matter is -- Judau doesn't know Tsutsujidai all that well. This might well be his, maybe, second time within the city limits -- and the things that happened here were always, despite the scale, things that happened at the peripheries of the young man's life until he found himself the housemate of two (2!) normal-sized (is it really 'normal-sized' if the kaiju are human-sized, wouldn't that be more like party-sized or fun-sized--) kaiju and someone at the very epicenter of everything that went down there. So, how does he know about Aya? Is it his preternatural Newtype powers, honed specifically to piercing beyond the time to see where all the best junk shops are??

No. The truth of the matter is... Leina told him about this place.

So how could he look for what he needs anywhere else but here, for what he needs it for?

All this to say, Sayla is not the only person here today; it's a few minutes after she's greeted Akane and gotten herself settled that a certain spacenoid from Shangri-La makes his way through the junk store, to the wealth of big ticket items in the back. ENTER: Judau Ashta, one hand scratching the back of his head as he walks in; despite the circumstances, despite EVERYTHING of late -- somehow, Judau still looks as carefree as Judau Ashta always does, to the casual observer.

"Holy crap," he mumbles, wide-eyed. "This place is a gold mine...!"

Carefree as ever -- except if one looked closer. There's a certain, subtle sense of purpose to him right now, more easily felt than seen. Like someone who's made a decision. Someone who's prepared to see it through.

In the immediate sense, though -- it doesn't change the fact that he's so engrossed in the immediate sensory overload of A JUNKER'S PARADISE OF QUALITY JUNK that he doesn't -immediately- notice Akane or Sayla, so busy is he swooping down to grab up a modestly-sized actuator, holding it high above his head to consider it with a squint --

--which is when he sees them both, just as his gaze draws up towards where he holds that actuator like it was a baby Simba held before its future kingdom. Judau blinks in muted surprise. A second passes.

"Oh, uh," he begins, eloquently. Akane and Sayla. Both of them he hasn't seen since Dakar. ... Since...

"... Hey."

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

Oop! Looks like things got busy real fast. Akane sits up a little straighter and adjusts her apron; while it isn't one of Aya's familiar aprons, it at least keeps her clothes from getting stained in the event something explodes on her, and that's the real most important thing.

"Oh, hey. I'm, uh -- well, okay!" Akane laughs awkwardly, rubbing at the back of her head a little and eventually electing to stand. "I went to sort through some stuff with Yamajii yesterday... really kinda nerve-wracking stuff, ehehe. I'm kinda worried about what comes next..."

She doesn't get too much further, though -- because Judau Ashta, hero of space is here, picking through the parts. Akane lets him, at first -- but when he sees them, Akane glances down and to one side.

"Hey," she offers back, after a few quiet seconds. "Listen, I, uh... I dunno how much stuff got back to you, but I feel like I kinda owe you an explanation for..." She gestures a little helplessly with one hand. "... Everything that happened at Dakar."

It isn't strictly charitable; some of it is that Akane feels like she needs to explain herself, in the sense that you need to explain yourself when called to the guidance office. As a result, she scoots a few inches toward Sayla.

"Also, I'm not authorized to haggle or do trades, so if you want stuff at anything but list price, you're gonna have to get mama eventually." ... she decides to let calling Rikka's mom 'mama' rock.

<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.

        Sayla gives a small nod, taking a sip of her coffee as Akane explains. "It sounds like you're getting into the thorny stuff already," she says, her expression. fairly neutral. "Please don't try and rush through it. It will probably be tough, but... you need to get it all out there at a safe pace."

        She turns when she hears the voice, and...

        "Judau..."

        It's not that she'd been actively avoiding him per se. Passively, perhaps, but he'd been working on the ZZ, and she'd been at the Villa or working on pulling something else out of storage. Occasional calls with PR, trying to get them to stall longer.

        Dealing with the matter of her brother.

        "Hi." He gets back, muted and unsure what to say next.

        Akane steps up instead. She casts her a quick glance, as if to ask 'are you sure?' But when she scoots closer, she nods. Better to be supportive rather than inquisitive here. She sets her coffee to one side, and gently places a hand on Akane's shoulder.

<Pose Tracker> Judau Ashta has posed.

Judau Ashta, the Man From Jupiter-Sort-Of, just sort of stands there, actuator clenched over his head with both hands, awkwardly. His arms start to tremble, just a little bit, reminding him that gravity exists, and he's holding a lot of metal aloft, and metal is heavy.

S l o w l y that actuator sags until he's just sort of dangling it in front of him by the time Akane and Sayla speak.

Seagreen eyes turn from Akane, to Sayla. And despite everything that's happened, despite everything that must have been going on in the junk trader's own turmoil-laden thoughts -- he offers her the briefest look of naked concern.

Sayla is important to Leina. ... Leina is important to Sayla. And she's done something for him he can never really repay her for, for all his life. How could he not be concerned for her?

He might give voice to those concerns right here and now, honestly - such is just the way of Judaus - but Akane speaks first. He blinks, and looks back to her. His brows furrow as she brings up Dakar; no matter how determined Judau might be right now, the nerve is still raw enough that invoking those memories makes his expression twist in a brief grimace.

Still...

"... Okay. Tell me what happened. Go ahead an' assume I don't know crap all."

... Judau's always been a 'yank the bandaid right off' kind of person. Besides.

It's best to do this now, before his entire rest of the day is taken up, because he is absolutely going to barter the shit out of basically anything he finds here.

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

"Someone on the Ra Mari said I need to tell someone in my program some of the stuff I'm going through or it's gonna get worse." That much Akane can be pretty matter-of-fact about.

Akane always cringes a little from touch, but she manages to keep it to a minimum this time. Pushing her dark hair back a little bit, she takes a deep breath as Judau speaks. She's expecting him to be upset --

-- and he does seem a little upset, but not in the way Akane was afraid of. That much makes it easier. "Okay," she says, centering herself. It takes a little bit; this is heavy for her too.

"Rikka and I got picked up by the Vist Foundation when we went on our road trip. It was supposed to be something easy, like -- do virtual school during the day, see a few sights, drive for a while, sleep in crappy motels. It didn't turn out that way." Her gaze tracks off to the side again, as she says, "I texted Leina where we were going, so someone would know if something went wrong. That..."

She laughs at the grim irony of the situation -- it's a barked, heaving thing. "They had Leina's phone, so they knew exactly how to get us to drive straight to them. When they first took us, I thought what they wanted was me, right? Of course they'd want the girl who used to be a god. But..." Her shoulders sag. "It was Rikka the whole time. They -- figured that people from this city weren't really people, so they could just overwrite her personality and get her and Leina into, like..."

How does she even explain this? She needed charts the last time she had to explain something to Judau. "... they made Leina too defeated inside to actually get mad. So they wanted Rikka to be someone mad but not defeated, so they'd -- make each other worse. Plus it's apparently just... 'best practices' to have multiple subjects whose relationships all suck."

Swallowing hard, Akane takes a step back, pulling away from Sayla to sit on a fluid pulse line. ... Yeah, best to do the rest of this one sitting, actually. "I have a little deprogramming training from 3G. I couldn't do anything about Leina, but... I did a few things for Rikka. One of them was to get her to be able to tell someone it was Leina in there."

Now comes the hard part, in front of Judau himself. "I didn't really plan this part, but once I saw you on the field I thought... it had to be you who found out first, and if you killed Leina or she killed you it'd wreck you. The Mu Gundam beats out the ZZ on paper even before you start looking at the HADES or the junk they threw on it, so... I ordered her to fight you. The thing with the touch comms was our idea from the start, but I don't think we could have done it without everyone getting suspicious if it didn't look like an attack."

Her gaze tracks up to Judau again -- then off to the side again. "... I tried to get Banagher and Mineva in position to save Leina, too, but it didn't quite work out... and only three of us were gonna fit in that cockpit." She's mostly forgiven herself for this -- but telling Judau doesn't make it easy to clear 'mostly.' "I could've killed Dr. Murasame, but... I thought it'd only make it harder for Rikka to get better."

As much of it as she can keep in her head -- at least the parts related to Judau -- are out there, now. "... If you've got questions for me, I'll take them. I know it's a lot. I wish things turned out better." Distantly, she finishes, "I was trying to figure out who was in that machine the whole time because Alexis gave me a leg up, but the first person I asked to help was Leina... so I was kinda doomed from the start on that one." It's so easy, knowing the whole picture, to wish she just hadn't been wrong at any point, hadn't made any missteps.

<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.

        The concern is mutual, in this case. Sayla is just better at hiding it on her face. Her feelings, however, are much more open than normal. Easier to spot, if you're looking.

        This is a more thorough version of things than what Sayla got at 3G France, and she lets Akane go when she moves to sit down. She doesn't pursue, but she does look down as she hears the story this way. But the way she talks about what they were doing to Leina and Rikka... "Madre de dios..."

        She steps back, leaning on that mountain of support. There's that concern again, radiating out. Her eyes shift to Judau, watching him. She can only imagine how she'd feel if it was her in that position. Wordlessly, she picks up her coffee, sipping it to keep her from interjecting, as she dearly wants to. So she stands to the side and waits. This was a lot to take in, even on the second try.

        So how must it be for Judau, right now?

<Pose Tracker> Judau Ashta has posed.

... they made Leina too defeated inside to actually get mad.

Judau Ashta is older now. Twenty three is still plenty young and immature enough to fly off the handle, and have fits of recklessness, especially if you're Judau Ashta... but experience has tempered that temper. Years ago, he probably would have hurled that actuator at something; yelled at Akane, even Sayla. He would have left right then and there to take his anger out on the people that actually deserved it.

But Judau Ashta is older now. And the passage of years and painful experience have matured him to the point that, right now, his hands merely grip onto the part they hold until his knuckles turn white.

"God dammit," he hisses. But he keeps it under control. Eventually, Judau sets that actuator down on the ground; he settles into a crouch beside it, hands layering overtop as he listens to what Akane says. In the end, it'd been Leina who had sent Akane down the wrong path -- and Vist who exploited their connection even further. Thick brows furrow towards a knot of thought. His lips twist.

"God dammit!" and this time, he just shouts those two words, slapping one palm brief but hard against the actuator's surface. "All of this over some stupid box! What kinda worthless asshole can do all this over somethin' so damn petty?!" But still, he takes a steady breath. He keeps it under control. Because he tells himself, like a mantra:

He's going to make all of them pay. But they're not what's important now.

He takes a few breaths. In and out. In and out. And eventually... eventually, he manages to reach some measure of calm. Enough that he can rub the back of his neck as he ruefully confesses:

"... Look. I admit, I was pretty pissed at you an' her at first." He can't lie about that. He's not so above things that he can't feel the frustration of having been so close to Leina, only to... but he shakes his head, slowly.

"... But you went out of your way to tell me the truth. If it weren't for you two, maybe none of us woulda ever known what was goin' on with Leina." It hurts to admit that, too -- but it doesn't stop the small, genuine smile that touches his lips all the same.

"... It's because of you an' Rikka we've got the chance to help her when she needs it most. So... thank you."

He pauses here, as she continues. She mentions a name, and he blinks, expression thoughtful. "... Murasame. So that's the dude's name, huh? ... Okay," is all he says.

That information is tucked away for later. Because, for now...

"... I guess I've just got one question. Somethin' I wanna confirm, I guess, before I go after Leina. ... The feeling in the Banshee. Elpeo." The thing that feels so much like someone took everything about Elpeo, and stripped it down to only the most negative of sentiments. Like a bad first impression. "... D'you know anything about that?"

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

Akane hears that anguish in Sayla -- watches her sip her coffee. She sees that white-knuckle grip, too. It's difficult for her to deal with -- she's able to manage the shouting, and even the hitting the actuator, this time. (... Albeit with a little bit of scooting away. Get enough chalk thrown at your head in elementary and middle school and you start developing reflexes.)

When Judau speaks, Akane listens -- and lets Judau work his way around everything. She nods a little when he mentions having been pissed off -- if it had been her in the ZZ and Judau on the Garuda...

... well, it never would have gotten to the point of any kind of subterfuge, but that's beside the point. If the roles were reversed she'd definitely have been mad, though. ... Maybe it's okay to be mad, sometimes.

Indeed --

"Getting you guys mad was kind of the point... or I guess, there was no way to get stuff to you without you getting mad? Either way." She breathes out, and while her shoulders remain a little scrunched up and her knees a little drawn in, she says, "You're welcome."

The last question, though... "I do. It's..." She pauses, and then says, "Actually, hold on. Let me get a --" She goes to the outdoor register, prints a blank receipt, and gets a pen. This is definitely a Diagram Problem.

"They had this thing on the Garuda. It looked like... about half of a mobile suit. They had like... a psycommu network between it, the Banshee, and eventually the Mu Gundam, where..." She's not an expert so this part's actually hard to explain. Accordingly, Akane gets to drawing; that's something she's good at. "It's kind of... her feelings, but kind of mostly not? Like... it's not... her ghost, or something." oh god what is this, how does she explain this to the world's most ridiculous junker. How. "It's like... when Elpeo was in that thing she was sweating feelings and now the psycommu is full of Elpeo Puru feelings sweat."

Perfect. This definitely makes more sense.

"And with Leina in there it's like... the feelings sweat gets on way Leina remembers those things, or something like that. And because she hates herself so much right now, she just gets obsessed with all the anger and guilt and stuff and lets it into her, and they kinda get into each other like when you put milk in your coffee or something." This is complicated, and she only has conversations with Dr. Murasame to work from. "Or I guess, sweat in your coffee?"

A pause.

"Hmm. Gross."

Lamely, she finishes, "That's why they have to keep her feeling so bad and guilty and hungry all the time. So she only gets the bad stuff. I had to use the conditioning junk they did to her just to make her eat and sleep, once, while I was on there..."

That's kind of an irrelevant aside. She stands up and shoves the receipt toward Judau, with another characteristically helpful diagram. "Some of this is me filling in some gaps. If I knew more, I'd tell you, but this is the practical part."

<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.

        Sayla stands and watches as Judau releases his anger. She's not impassive but... She's used to outbursts like this. The fact that it's all he's doing... honestly, it's admirable restraint.

        Still she can't help but be baffled at Akane's description a little. Explaining it to Judau seems to mean it takes Sayla a few seconds to mentally translate. "...That seems to fit with what I've been told." Sayla says, after a moment.

        This may need explaining. "I followed up on a lead that Akane gave me. It paid off with a copy of Murasame's research up to Dakar." Talking about the hard facts gives her something to focus on other than the details of Leina's imprisonment. Of Akane having to order Leina to rest or eat. "I... didn't look through it myself. The only other copies that exist to my knowledge are in the hands of Captain Testarossa's intelligence team, and with Dr Hinoki Sai. And that means 3G will be best positioned to undo what Murasame did when we get Leina back."

        

        She pauses, looking at the little diagram. Memories of seeing that near destroyed unit in the labs. "...It's still there. On the Garuda. I think what happens to it should be a choice for you and Leina to make when this is all over."

<Pose Tracker> Judau Ashta has posed.

Akane Shinjo engages in Exposition Mode. With a well-illustrated diagram! And evocative terminology, like feelings sweat! How effective is it...?!

Diagram shoved to the squatting Ashta, he takes it, tilts it up, and squints at it. His expression throughout the explanation? Oddly, SUSPICIOUSLY attentive. And now--

"Uh huh," Judau proclaims, firmly. "Got it."

Judau absolutely does Get It; he's absorbed the information with impossible efficiency; he might know even more about the related concepts than he ever had before or could have in any possible timeline?!

Akane Shinjo's Adapted Exposition Style is a smashing success! Honestly, it's a triumph. But also, to a certain extent...

"That's sorta what I figured."

--

Look. Judau isn't an idiot about -literally- everything!

-- just -- a lot of things

"I mean, like -- not this weird sweaty feelings telephone game they got goin' on here," and here Judau flaps the receipt, "which is super gross. An' messy. Trading sweat is messed up." And thus, it must also be for feelings sweat.

He knows -- feelings sweat is the messiest sweat of all.

Judau's brows furrow. He brings the receipt back down to consider the diagram anew. "But... even from the beginning, things didn't feel... right." Even from the beginning, Judau's thought had been 'it's Elpeo, but not.' "Like a... bad impression of Elpeo, where the only thing they remembered were the ugliest parts of her." The jealousy. The aggression. The worst aspects of that mercurial temper. "I could never put my finger on it, y'know? I knew Elpeo. ... She was family. An' I knew her, even after..." Even after she died. Judau shakes his head. "She was more than just her worst moments. Way more."

He falls silent, then, if only for a few seconds. And then:

"Leina and Elpeo -- both of 'em never really got to know each other except when they were at their lowest. Leina only saw those worst moments, an' Elpeo..." She only saw something in Leina she thought she could never have. Judau lets his sentence trail there.

"If this is all just... impressions, or whatever, reflecting on each other... I think I know why her and Leina would be connected like this. It's like... seeing yourself in a funhouse mirror."

Did he -- just make an analogy--?!

"Full of feelings sweat."

He almost had it.

But -- as harrowing as this is, as angry as it makes him knowing what they did to his sister - and to the memory of the girl who became a second sister to him - it fills the last remaining pieces of the picture he needed. He understands. ... And maybe, knowing that, they'll be able to reach Leina that much better.

Judau is thinking about the best approach to this, when Sayla speaks. He blinks, seagreen gaze turning her way. "It's still there--?" he wonders. And knowing that, he comes to a conclusion:

He needs to see it.

What happens after, well -- when Sayla describes it as a choice he and Leina will have to make, when she's back? Despite everything, that makes the young man smile. Because she treats it as a certainty.

And that's something they need, right now.

"Yeah," he says, firmly. He looks back down at that diagram for a second, tapping the back of a finger against it once before he looks back up at Sayla.

"... I'm glad you're here, Sayla," he finally says, earnestly. She's one of the most important people in Leina's life. And--

"You saved her life once. I know we can do it again if you're here."

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

It turns out that the one time Akane actually tried explaining things to Knight back when he was a baby... helped build skills that have now been very useful twice in explaining utterly nonsense things to Judau Ashta. It's almost like they have very similar communication styles in some respects!

Sayla catches Akane completely off guard with the comment that she has a copy of Murasame's research. "By the time he was doing stuff after Dakar, we were talking... we can probably get a pretty okay big picture at that point." ... does she want a bigger picture, though? Does she really want to read her own file? See someone else's 'Akane Shinjo,' someone else's 'Rikka Takarada,' someone else's 'Leina Ashta'?

... well, she's already seen a lot of it -- and the urge to know is always kind of crushing. "Dr. Sai's probably going to be pretty familiar with this stuff by the time we get Leina back," which will definitely happen, as far as Akane's concerned -- Sayla's confidence buoying her own. "I think she's mostly done this with BioNet Zonder victims before, which is kinda -- easy mode compared to this stuff..."

When Judau remarks that this interpretation of the data mostly fits his gut level understanding, Akane nods. "You'd definitely know her best," she says, ambiguous on purpose. "I think you have pretty much the right idea...

Akane gives Judau and Sayla the chance to have their moment -- it's not her moment and she knows that. What she does say -- only when they're finished -- is...

"I kinda... I think I have to trust you guys with this one. I never did get any kinda schematic you could actually build to Engineering, for removing cockpits or whatever..." ... she can't let herself skate that easily. It's not just the functional part. "I think there's someone who needs me the way Leina needs you guys right now, though."

Her head tilts, just slightly, toward Aya's main building, in indication.

<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.

        Sayla simply listens as Judau puts it all out there. They only saw each other at their lowest... And Leina still kept trying, after all that. Judau kept trying, for both of them.

        "Banagher and Mineva have the Garuda, right now. I don't know if it's still resupplying, but we can find a way to get you there if they aren't."

        And then she is caught off guard. She would have perfeclty understood if he'd been angry with her... But there's a part of her that's deeply glad he isn't. "Judau... Thank you." She gives him a smile in return. "Yeah. We'll get her back home safely. That's the only outcome I'm accepting." She pauses, casting a look briefly to Akane. "I have a promise to keep."

        Akane comments she has to trust them, and Sayla nods. "Yeah. The two of you should be together right now." There's something buoying about that too. That Rikka and Akane are in each other's safe hands. It means she can focus on the goal... and it meants they're okay. "I'll let you know as soon as she's ready for visitors."

        That determination could be denial... but there's something real in it this time. Certainty.