2023-01-04: Cleaning's a euphemistic habit of mine, so I hope you don't mind if I control the process

• Log: Cleaning's a euphemistic habit of mine, so I hope you don't mind if I control the process
• Cast: Yuliana Kafim, Sophia Mayhew Castellan
• Where: Military Base, Khanka
• Date: 2023-01-04
• Summary: The Nega Force and G-Hound are working together to try and clean up the crime in Khanka -- but somehow, Sophia's never been able to get at the greater criminal elements of Celestial Being or the REA in their operation. Surely this has nothing to do with Yuliana's able assistance.

---

<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.

        The dregs of Khanka have been an ongoing issue which this joint REA/G-Hound operation has done its best to address. Several of the worst (the weakest) actors have been removed from their posts; they've managed to root out some crime, too, linked to those corrupt officers. Really, the whole thing has been...

        ... a moderate success. It's been a moderate success. That's the word to define this situation: moderation. Several times, there may have been the impression that something big could have happened -- only for the situation to resolve itself with a much more modest success.

        (Yuliana Kafim, nee Dispersal, is an excellent saboteur.)

        She and Sophia are due for their next appointment on the topic -- they meet, sometimes, to compare notes and move forward. (Yuliana didn't attend her last meeting, on the 16th of December. She said she was ill and unfit to travel. It's a reasonable excuse, but then, all her excuses are reasonable. Particularly the one about how she was getting married! She got married, did you know?) Unfortunately, Yuliana can't duck this meeting, because they're coming up on Celestial Being elements she'd rather not sacrifice, leaving aside the fact the Lieutenant Yang Chun is in their sights and he's useful.

        And so she's here, in an empty meeting room of a Khanka military base, one leg folded over the other on the couch. Her arm stretches out over the backrest; the other drums on the armrest. She's plain clothes, as she's wont to be, with a dark suit coupled with a cheerful purple scarf around her neck. Her bangs have been tragically lost, so her face -- and the scar down the left side of it -- is on full display.

        She hasn't seen Sophia for a while, she reflects, to herself, idly. She wonders if she's still as stiff as ever.

<Pose Tracker> Sophia Mayhew Castellan has posed.

Khanka has been a long grind, but it's one that Commander Sophia Mayhew Castellan can mostly leave to her lieutenants for weeks at a time. Desmond is a wonder of information gathering, with a nearly preternatural sense of others. Almace is good at being a huge woman who can pick up a man's entire desk then move it behind her so she can stare him directly in his eyes. Mitsuba isn't really Sophia's Lieutenant at all, but she does have a 2 kilometer long battleship Sophia can sometimes ask to hover quietly overhead while someone monologues menacingly about the properties of gravity.

But sometimes, the two heads of the hydra have to meet. Especially with how...modest the successes have been.

And especially with what Sophia knows now. Her Geass is on as she walks toward the meeting room. She's disarmed, of course, Well. Mostly. The rifle she habitually carries has been examined and sealed into the back holster she carries it in, the strap a deep weight pulling into the chest of her uniform.

She watches the snaking lines of bonds - mostly hate, mostly spite, and one she knows is from a new member of her crew, shining as a slithering, twisting corded web of ties she has decided to simply identify as The One I Must Kill. All of it, twining down toward Yuliana and then vanishing into the abyss that she is, resonating only enough to show Sophia her location in space.

A powerful tool. But not one she's expecting to use today. She stops peering into that world before passing into the veil of Minovsky's Woman. With the Geass off, she hardly notices.

"Captain Dis--" she begins, and then tips her head. Her eyes flick over her. Still stiff as a board, then. "Kafim," she corrects. "Sorry. Habits. I believe I owe you my congratulations, on that note."

Her eyes carve along the scar for a moment, but she chooses not to comment, instead finding her seat.

<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.

        Likewise, Yuliana has lieutenants who she's been sending to attend to this, and that means something horrific is also true:

        Desmond and Parminder have almost definitely gotten coffee at one point.

        Yuliana is -- visibly -- disarmed; as for the garrotte-wire hidden in her watch, and the poison hairpin, and the knife hidden in her pen, well, those are all just fashion accessories. They're hardly declarations of war!

        (Even if she might be, strictly speaking, a walking warcrime.)

        She's certainly someone with a lot of targets on her back, and maybe that's why she's leaning back on the couch, so it isn't exposed. She looks to the door before Sophia appears there, eyes narrowing as she identifies the lack of connection which indicates --

        -- no, Sophia isn't one of the Awakened, and she's the one walking through the door. Yuliana's narrowed eyes squint a little harder, brow knitting in confusion, but it disappears to a smile a moment later. "Why, thank you, Captain Castellan," she answers, without missing a beat. Her right hand lifts to her face, fingers fanning over her smile, and it's surely a coincidence that she shows off her rings in the process. (Rich gold, set with onyx, diamonds, and emeralds; the wedding and engagement rings, taken together, must have cost a mint.) "With my dear Dr. Kafim, I've been made a very happy woman..."

        Rumour is she married a half-Meltrandi gold medal Olympian turned doctor. Other rumours hold that she's married a witch who opened a horrific portal to someting worse than Hell in order to thwart the assassination attempt which interrupted the ceremony. Yuliana, herself, has been remarkably cagey on the nature of her beloved wife, beyond the fact that she is her very much beloved wife.

        She sees Sophia's attention on her scar, and her hand lifts to brush over it, a shade self-consciously. "Oh, it's quite old," she asides. "I've been fighting for close to nine years, and one does tend to accrue markings, on a long enough timeframe."

        Gesturing loosely to Sophia, she moves on, smoothly: "How have you found the operation? Cascade reported that Wei Throttle was charged to a sentence of five years just the other day... I'd say our efforts have been quite effective." She smiles; she sells it.

<Pose Tracker> Sophia Mayhew Castellan has posed.

Sophia's certainly not Awakened, not on any metric anyone can measure. That'd be on reports. They can test for these things, now.

Still...some of those field achievements do sound like the skills of someone who can detect another's presence, don't they...?

Not relevant to the moment.

Sophia has heard the rumors, both sides. Right now she's not overly interested in them. Or rather...she chooses not to fear them. "Perhaps I should be jealous. A House heir's prospects are thin indeed."

She's a serious woman, but she's not an actual rock. She does manage a ghost of a smile at Yuliana's dismissal of the scar. "Ah, yes. I've avoided it. So far. A captain's berth is not a place to accumulate scars."

She does nod, pulling a small card case from her jacket pocket and then laying it on the table against later in the conversation. Some manner of projector card, most likely. "It has been fruitful, certainly. Catching Throttle at that vineyard was a particularly inspired snare. Though..."

She doesn't direct it AT Yuliana, but she does sort of, throw the ball on a parabolic arc that goes in her direction. "I begin to feel like we're missing the big fish."

<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.

        "More's the pity," Yuliana sympathises with Sophia, inclining her head for a moment. "But I'm sure there's someone out there for you, just the same."

        It might even be genuine sympathy! Everyone deserves love. Even Britannians, probably.

        Probably.

        "Oh, I could take to a warship and be perfectly safe, I'm sure," Yuliana agrees, still smiling. "But I've always been a woman who prefers to be on the field. It's leading from the front, for me." Surely it's not criticism! She's bantering!

        Her hand comes up, to brush at her jaw, down to her chin, as Sophia offers her own sleight of hand. "Do you think so..?" She defers, gaze veiling. "I'll grant you that Khanka is... a complicated place. We may be at this for some time before we're able to make the progress we'd like," offered with a shade of apology, as if Yuliana, too, is frustrated with their progress.

        "But certainly," she offers, gesturing with an open plam, "we keep moving forward. If we were to accelerate too quickly, we may well frighten our quarry only for them to bolt away from the snares. Don't you think patience is the key to catching your prey?"

<Pose Tracker> Sophia Mayhew Castellan has posed.

"I find I make my choices better from the rear," Sophia says, idly. Her hands folded. "Though it seems you're not the only one who prefers a more personal approach. But..."

She transitions it to their discussion, hands open, palm up, motioning to the very subject. "From afar, the data reveals more. The ones we catch aren't just intermediaries, they're uninteresting ones. Almace's interrogations have been quite consistent about this. Men and women with their hands in the dirt, but so far from the roots we must pull."

She doesn't say the implication, because it would turn rapidly into an accusation she doesn't quite intend to drive so directly.

"Oh, certainly. But watch the patterns. Observe what you catch. Or you'll be lucky to catch anything worth your time."

<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.

        "And you're not the only one I know who prefers a wider view," Yuliana agrees, easily, on the topic of front and back lines.

        (She prefers to be in the middle of the fray, of course, but her darling Elisa does so love her clever little tablets.)

        "Oh, I do hope you're not trying to make demands," Yuliana pouts, when Sophia finishes up. "We're friends here, after all! Of course, I understand your frustration, but... it is only through catching those peripherial agents that we'll be able to uncover the depths of the rot." It's all very sympathetic language. Yuliana... sounds sincere.

        "You see," she goes on, smiling, "individual little fish know who to report to. Enough of those names, and you're able to build a case to carve into the heart of the big fish." And this much is even true, though one might question why Yuliana knows so much about investigating (her own) people.

        Probably healthier not to ask too many questions, though.

        "Though," she sighs, with regret, "it's a shame we've caught so many... how unfortunate that the Republic should have such nefarious actors inside it." And this, in turn, is a subtle redirection to get Sophia talking about her feelings, instead of the operation. The less they decide, the more convenient it is for her.

<Pose Tracker> Sophia Mayhew Castellan has posed.

"Ah, merely a statement of my approach," Sophia clarifies. Though the speed with which Yuliana moves on that 'we're friends' line is not below her notice.

Of course, for two people who habitually hide their emotions - one through prattling faux-gregariousness and the other through Stoic intensity - and are blind to the deeper layers of these things, all they have is the other's masks. Sophia doesn't particularly give away what she thinks of Yuliana's excusing, other than to state simply, "You are, of course, correct. Still....well. I have no specific proposal." That she's going to say. Her eyes do linger on Yuliana, just considering the woman's appearance and way.

And then she scoffs. "It's hardly a surprise," she says, flatly. "Every surface you touch on this planet is rotting. An infection of foolishness and petty spites that would sooner burn the world than watch another man eat his daily bread. It is what G-Hound is for."

<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.

        It's because they're such good friends!

        "Don't worry about a thing," Yuliana assures Sophia and her lack of proposals, and don't think of a scorpion assuring a frog. "I do know what I'm doing, you know!"

        She doesn't have to feign her confidence.

        She knows exactly what she's doing.

        "Of course, of course," she agrees, easily, to Sophia's scoff. "G-Hound does us all a service, and I am so pleased to be able to assist you in your work, here and otherwise." She smoothly moves past one reading of 'every surface you touch' to the more general interpretation, of course.

        If she were feeling more positively towards her nation, she might press, here, about the questions around G-Hound -- the interesting lack of information where so much of their operational data ought to be.

        She doesn't.

        "Unfortunately," Yuliana sighs, "equality is a distant dream, on this Earth Sphere of ours, at present... but my dreams have ever been ambitious things." That's one word for Yuliana's dreams, certainly. "Perhaps, one day, things will change..."