2022-10-06: Independent Consultation

• Cast: Guy Shishioh, Koji Kabuto
• Where: GGG Orbit Base
• Date: U.C. 0096 10 06
• Summary: Following news of dire trouble on Orbit Base, Koji takes LiSA up to see what help they can be. He also carries some news that the communications-damaged station hadn't yet received....

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<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

Things are more than slightly chaotic on Orbit Base, but the show must go on. The arrival is coordinated by a voice that hasn't been heard on the GGG mic lines in a while, Mobile Operator (Temporary?) Ayame Ushiyama - maiden name Hatsuno - whose recent motherhood has made her no less willing to bark at people who can't keep in their trajectory projection. With the sheer gravity of the intrusion, security is incredibly tight. Still, someone like Koji can make his way through with a minimum of being stared at by GGG's army of men in stormtrooper visors.

When they FIND Guy - off in the hangars, down in the hangar occupying PhantomGao's battered husk - he's pacing nervously. Stop. Look at the battered GaoMachine. Pace to the other end. Pace again. Stop. Check for messages. Back to the other side. Look out across the machinery bay, uneasily twisting his foot.

<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.

====== HIGH ORBIT ======

A gleaming hyper-streamlined white-and-red shuttle cruises towards Orbit Base. At the helm: One Koji Kabuto. "Orbit Base, this is private craft PPL-1, requesting docking access."

Over his shoulder, LiSA peers out of the forward screen, blue eyes wide in awe. "Wooooow! It's so pretty!"

Koji looks over to his left, watching Earth beneath him as he surrenders thruster and attitude control of the Double Spazer to the Orbit Base hangar. "... Yeah, it is. I just wish it wasn't such a mess down there."

====== ORBIT BASE DEPLOYMENT HANGAR ======

Disembarking, it becomes immediately clear to Koji that things aren't exactly clean and tidy up here, either. After some navigating of security on behalf of his companion, who appears on no official databases but has similar "special consultant" clearance to Koji, he eventually manages to find Guy pacing in front of the ruined chassis of PhantomGao. "... This situation's really bothering you, huh, Guy?"

<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

Guy's position lets him spot them approach. He shifts his weight again. "I hate not being able to do anything," he admits. "I was telling the NERV kids to keep their heads, but I feel like mine's gonna fly off." He scratches the side of his neck - weirdly low, though there's no obvious mark to say why.

A few seconds pass. "I knew her when she was barely up to my knees," he says, clearly referring to Alouette. "She saved my life and Mikoto's. Something that could make her do something like this..."

His jaw sets. "...I've never seen it go well."

<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.

Koji's lips thin, and he walks straight across the hangar floor to wrap the World's Strongest Evoluder in a big hug. "We'll find her, Guy."

Stepping back, he lets out a breath. "Okay. Step-by-step. Introductions: This is Lisa, the girl I told you about. Lisa: This is Guy Shishioh. You've reviewed our database about him already." The blue-eyed, blue-haired teenager, still in her spacesuit, nods and waves one gloved hand. "You care about her a lot," she observes, taking Guy's hand. "I'm sure she'll be fine, if she has someone like you willing to fight for her." She smiles - more like beams, really.

Koji's all business. "Alright, walk me through the situation and the triage. If I can figure out where Lisa and I can be most helpful, we can get to work right away - and the Double Spazer's lab can help parallel process any complicated systems you need to get back up and running."

<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

Guy visibly deflates at that hug, releasing some amount of stress. "Yeah," he says, patting Koji on the back in thanks.

He squares himself into a better stand as introductions begin. "Pleasure to finally meet you," he says, with at least a ghost of his usual grin. His hand taken, it kindles a little more, tipping his head in thanks. "That's the goal," he says - maybe a bit noncommittal. Still, he manages to draw in a breath and fill himself up a bit. "You're right, of course. We can't just mope, either."

"Alright, sure. C'mon," Guy says, and guides the two away from that hangar, into the main machinery bay. With a massive hunt on for Alouette and the other missing support staff, none of the Strongest Brave Robo Corps are here, and the Order Room isn't, either - that's up at the main position. "Alright. Alouette went missing a couple days ago now - but before she left, her terminal and logins were used to damage...well, just about every offensive system we have. Mirror Catapults, the SympaRate Monitor, basically every copy of the Program Drive. She even encrypted the entire Hammer Connect program, despite Goldy still being...not here."

Guy leads Koji into an elevator set into the middle of that platform, which in turn enters into the center column around which the Order Room goes up and down.

And THAT opens out into the Second Order Room, or rather, the Order Room, down in the Second Order Room position, which is a massive analytical stage, the floors a shining white and filled with computer terminals. "We've been having the Three Doctors handle triage," Guy says. They're here, but busily working at terminals in a long bank of them. "Most of the critical damage is already fixed, but..."

One man, with long gray-brow hair, and a quite aquiline noise and a particularly sharp face in general, says as an aside, "Dr. Inubouzaki, programming. Program Drive was Miss Pommier's finest and most complicated work. I'm doing my best, but it might be months yet before we can field GaoGaiGo again. I've dismissed GaoFighGar's completely, considering its state." He glances up at Koji, nodding briefly. "A pleasure, Dr. Kabuto. I wish I could favor you with a moment."

Guy shrugs, helplessly. "For a mercy, she didn't disable us defensively. Once we got the Gantry Cranes and mirror catapults back online, we sent the Robo Corps to search. No luck yet."

<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.

"So you guys have no clue about the reasons why she'd do that?" Koji frowns. "I didn't know miss Pommier, but it definitely sounds uncharacteristic of... well, anyone who'd choose to work with 3G."

He listens to the full list of injuries, whistling darkly. "Okay, so total force projection lockout." He nods to Inubouzaki when he introduces himself, looking stunned. "Months to get GaoGaiGo back out there? That's..." They know exactly how much of a problem it is, Koji, it doesn't need vocalising.

"So, reactor, defensive systems, life support, no problems there?" He nods. "Reactors being okay knocks out my specialty, but I'm sure there's something I can do at a computer."

LiSA is staring wide-eyed at the massive array of terminals. "I might be able to assist? Direct access to the network may be able to rebuild the systems faster."

"Oh, right, yeah," Koji elaborates, "Lisa is capable of directly interfacing with all sorts of computer systems - that's why I brought her along."

<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

"None," Guy says, arms crossed. A screen hovering above the floor shows incoming data from the various search parties - to say nothing of the entire rest of GGG's operation, which is, of course, still technically ongoing. Nobody's paying much attention to it except the Intelligence operator who looks just a little beside himself.

It's fine, Saginomiya always looks a little stressed. That's what happens when you read Intelligence files all day.

"Any explanation that makes a lick of sense involves deep-cover sleeper programming, or a body double, or..." Guy stops THAT line of thought with some visible effort, muttering just, "Or something," to conclude.

"It's the complexity of Program Drive," Inubouzaki explains. "We're talking about masses in the thousands of tons with interlocks that require millisecond timing, connecting their most vital internal systems. Even getting the simulations to mostly work will take weeks. Actually doing it in real combat environments? Two months might not be long enough."

The blue-haired woman next to him, Akiko Hirata, notes, "We're fortunate it's in a state we can repair. We might be looking at years if we had to rebuild it."

The third of the Three Doctors, Tohru Nozaki, a bespectacled man with short-cut hair, adds, "We're not seeing any abnormalities in operations systems. She did take out almost all of our internal monitoring and a good chunk of the external, too, presumably to avoid tracking. We have no idea what happened - basically anywhere - between the night before she left and..." He cranes his neck to a clock on his monitor. "...what day is that," he mutters.

Guy asides to Koji, "Yesterday."

Then he turns to LiSA. "Huh. So a bit like my Evoluder abilities, then. I wasn't having much luck, but another pair of eyes can't hurt. Try it out, by all means."

<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.

Mental warfare is way out of Koji's competence zone - it's not an attack angle Hell ever placed much stock in, after all. He merely frowns, seriously. "She's... probably familiar with the standard search patterns of the Brave Robo Corps and the Intelligence Division."

Upon receiving permission to interface, LiSA ducks down under one of the terminals, pulling out some cables and going over their ends consideringly. Then, laying the cables in her lap, she reaches her right arm over to her left bicep and peels away a tiny patch of skin, revealing open interface ports, which she gingerly plugs the cables into.

Immediately: "Oh, wow!" Her eyes are glazed over but her expression's bright, curious and fascinated. "I don't recognise any of this architecture! I mean, I can figure it out, but... This isn't human underlying language."

Koji nods. "Like that, rather than the way you do it, Guy."

<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

The team grimaces, but nod at Koji's assessment. "Probably. Mamoru seems to have an idea, so..." Guy somehow manages to not look put at ease as he says, "I'm leaving him to it."

They watch LiSA plug in, naked fascination on all. They're researchers of the cutting edge, after all. Guy glances to Koji. "Physical compatibility with an unknown system? Impressive on its own."

And then she says the thing, and Guy's apparent frustration is briefly surprised out of place. "Huh. Surprised she saw that so fast. You're right, the lowest layers are directly from Galeon's Black Box. The whole thing's Green Planet technology we've been refining."

<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.

"Yeah, the fact that she could interface at all with our hardware at the Labs was... just one of the many curiosities about her," Koji agrees. "It's almost like she can - I dunno - intuitively grasp it?"

She certainly seems to be properly awed by the system she's currently hooked up to. "Hmmmm~... This is very different to what I'm used to, but - oooh, I think that's some human language - oh okay I'm starting to see how it's put together. Getting two totally different theses of programming language to even work together, let alone as smoothly as this? Whoever wrote the first layer to go over the Black Box foundations must have been super smart."

The headset around her neck flickers to life, projecting a holographic screen under her nose that she glances down to, bringing her hands up to rest upon the light. "Hmmmm. ... I think Dr. Inubouzaki is right about the Final Fusion protocol. I could maybe make a couple nudges here and there, but it wouldn't speed things up any. The SympaRate monitor... You don't actually need to see it for the system to work, right?"

"It makes it easier for the Order Room to keep track of the condition of the Brave Robos in case anything goes wrong, Lisa," Koji explains. "Like the support team at the Lab."

"Okay~! I can probably get that back up and running, no problem!"

<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

"She emerged from the machine you found, right?" Guy says. There's no secrets on Orbit Base. Especially not ultra-giant robot secrets. "Well, I guess I know a thing or two about friends emerging from the bellies of an unknown. Seems like she's just as helpful as mine."

This is a slightly tortured comparison to Mamoru. He grins, though.

...must have been super smart. Guy doesn't quite wilt, but his posture stiffens. "My father, yeah. Leo Shishioh. One of the smartest people of the last few generations. We lost him fighting the Primevals, but we've been fortunate to find a lot of people able to carry some of his load." He grins to the Doctors, who tip their heads with confidence of their own.

"That'd help a lot!" Akiko supplies. "We can't form SeiRyuJin without it! She's the biggest tool we have left, right now."

Not that those two twins have had much luck forming SeiRyuJin anyway, but, that's another story. Better to have the potential.

<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.

"Yeah, Infinity created her. I think in response to my presence, but there's not enough information to even speculate, really. She seems able to interface with it, though."

Guy explains about Leo. "... Oh." LiSA blinks away from the programming, for a moment, turning to look at Guy from her sieza position. "I'm sorry."

Koji places a hand on Guy's shoulder. "We're all grateful to Leo for his brilliance, I think. I know he'd managed to win even Grandfather's respect, and getting anything better than a judgmental stare or a dire warning out of Old Man Juzo was like getting blood from a stone - but it's undeniable that without Leo we all might not even be here today."

Subdued a little, LiSA nods to Akiko and turns back to her work.

Koji sighs. "I guess since you've been blacked out for so long you're still catching up on the big news, huh?"

<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

"It's fine. It was a while ago." Guy's gaze turns up, briefly, to stars he can't see. "And he's still helping us, however he can." because he's a a ghost immortal. don't worry about it. He gives Koji that grin of his, rallying. "GGG only got off the ground as fast as it did because of Galeon's black box, and Dad's hard work deciphering it. They don't call men like him the Ten Great Minds for nothing."

As for the 'big news', Guy grimaces. "I heard something big happened down at the tactical weapons storage in Torrington, but between the fervor and our own systems being mostly out, we don't have much about it. We lost the base, yeah?" Guy scratches his head. Considering his career, Guy has a somewhat unique perspective on weapons like that, such as 'boy coulda used some of those when we were fighting a Zonder demigod the size of a planet.'

<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.

"Yeah. That's what's in the official report, at least. Unofficially... I spoke to a couple of the people injured in the attack, and I trust their judgment on this - there was another belligerent involved."

Koji is about to describe the nu Gundam, before remembering that Guy and the rest of the Gutsy Galaxy Guard completely missed Axis and everything surrounding it. Instead, he cuts right to the chase:

"Amuro turned up out of nowhere - with a Gundam sheathed in the Aura of Dawn."

<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

No secrets indeed; that sends a gasp up and down the Second Order Room. Ayame, on Mobile Operation and Comms, yelps, "That guy DIED!"

"...not necessarily," Saginomiya pipes up from Intelligence. "The fate of Amuro Ray and Char Aznable following Axis Shock was uncertain. They were at the epicenter of a massive psychoreactive event, and vanished without a trace." ... "It's possible," he concludes.

Guy still stares, wide-eyed, for several moments more. "But how in the world could he have gotten to Orange Site?"

Saginomiya makes a noise like he's about to pipe in and then just says, "Impossible to guess. Jupiter?"

Guy palms his face, still working out his emotions on this one. "Guess that's the usual explanation. Amuro..."

<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.

"If he shows up again - and he probably will - we can just ask him. Once we've beaten the Oath out of him, that is." It sounds like a joke, but Koji is firmly serious. "No other way we're stopping him, with his new model Gundam supercharged on it. I'll make sure Orbit Base has the specs for the RX-93 Nu Gundam available - maybe between it and the footage from the Lion Reine fights we can start drawing up predictions for how different we can expect Oath-charged machines to be."

He sighs. "Sayaka and Tetsuya were at Torrington, fighting him. They're fine, they just haven't checked in yet." He's quietly worried.

<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.

"He won't be able to resist," Guy says, with a grim confidence. "It's an...obligation. A duty. Once it's in there..." ...he shakes his head. "We'll get him out. Just make sure to let us know, we can try to rush some Purifiers over." 'Some', he says; there's only 3 total.

"That'll help!!" the excitable Tamara Gogol over at Research hollers. "Oh BOY gonna run some cross-sectional analysis and extrapolate some DATASETS!!"

She talks at a seemingly endless rattle, but descends into chuckling menacingly over at her console a moment later. "She's right, though," Guy notes. "We'll get you the results of the analysis as soon as it's been, uh, double-checked by Yang."

A moment, and then he gives Koji a grin of his own, and a pat on the shoulder. "They'll turn up. Not sure Axis itself coulda killed Tetsuya. We'll let you know if anything comes in on our side."