2022-06-22: Assessment
- Log: 2022-06-22- Assessment
- Cast: Riika Sheder, Akane Shinjo
- Where: Tsutsujidai High School
- OOC - IC Date: 0096-06-22
- Summary: Riika Sheder, having put together a little bit more about her benefactor, approaches a girl she's fairly sure is also among his charges. They talk a little.
<Pose Tracker> Riika Sheder has posed.
This is Akane's space, but there really are intruders.
Take Riika. After escaping (being rescued) from the Nadesico, she had stayed on board various ZAFT ships and bases for a time; explaining her actions, filing full reports, and being reassigned to a hellaciously complex piece of cutting-edge equipment in a move that she couldn't decide if it was meant to be a punishment or a promotion.
But she hadn't been able to stay away from active duty forever. She knew that, ZAFT Command knew that - and it had ended rather suddenly when Britannians had attacked the transport she had been working on. After that, Riika was given the same freedom she had before the incident.
One of the things Riika is occasionally responsible for in space is Junius Seven patrol, which is why she's here now. Though, she had her own reasons for volunteering for it.
Which leads us to now.
Riika hasn't actually been in a high school for a couple years, but - let's be honest - when she's dressed appropriately she doesn't actually stand out. She looks about the right age, after all (she's nineteen, but it's easy to guess lower). She wouldn't wear a Tsutsujidai uniform, both because she doesn't have one and because she is vaguely uneasy with lying that much, so instead she's wearing a skirt and blouse in the proper colour if not design. She has a full backpack over one shoulder, which everyone seems to assume carries school supplies but actually carries clothes. She found the trick the last time she got to Tsutsujidai.
Also, she's here. Right now.
Akane isn't the first to see Riika, unless she has some kind of foreigner sense (which she might, for all Riika knows). This is because she's decided to come up from behind, so that she's too close for Akane to easily pretend she didn't see her by the time she actually speaks.
"Shinjo? Is this a bad time?" Riika has a slightly apologetic smile. "I was hoping to catch you and I couldn't find you any other way, but I didn't think you'd be with your friends..."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Tsutsujidai uniform regulations are pretty lax; the high school doesn't get at people for even pretty flagrant violations, so a blouse and skirt combination that generally looks right leads to zero complaints.
"... Oh, Sheder," Akane says, as Riika addresses her out loud. (She lacks any particular foreigner sense -- or at least, if she has one, it's too atrophied to be useful lately.) "No, this is fine. Marusan's probably going to head to Dance Club in a bit," she says, with a small smile. "You two have fun," she says, tone teasing, as she stands up from the bench and moves to face Riika. "Let's talk somewhere a little more private, okay?"
Akane starts to lead Riika away -- toward the stairwell. "I haven't seen you in a while," she says, with a small smile. "Did something happen, or did you just get lost on the trains again?" She doesn't press too hard yet; she doesn't know what Riika is actually here for, so she needs to remain a little cautious.
<Pose Tracker> Riika Sheder has posed.
It's not like Riika was *really* infiltrating. She's not a spy! She just wanted to be able to find Akane without sticking out like a sore thumb.
"Well, if it's not a bother," Riika says, before giving a very slight bow to the others. "Sorry!" Still, it's gone about as well as she could hope for. She's perfectly fine with being hustled along to a stairwell, and she doesn't talk a whole lot until they get there.
Then she opens up. "Something came up," Riika says. "I wasn't sure if you got the news in here... I brought some if you want to see it, but I'm not as proud of it as I thought I'd be." She hesitates a beat, then, a little carefully - so much so that it comes through in her tone of voice, even though she's keeping it down - asks, "Have you spoken to Alexis lately?" She knows he's passed her a note in the past, but these days...
Just like then, Alexis still doesn't strike her as very attentive or caring.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Akane isn't sure what Riika knows about her, at this point -- which is a little nervewracking, because she's spent the better part of 16 months having perfect information control over her life (as far as she's aware). The fact that Riika is now bringing her 'something' that 'came up' and needed *her* attention...
Well. She can't look weak about it. That's a crucial step here. "I think we need to take this one from the top, so sure. What have you got?" Akane actually moves to sit down on the steps rather than just stand in the stairwell and talk; the reason for this becomes obvious when she pulls out a notebook and a pen.
"You aren't the first person to bring me something kinda weird lately. And... I think Alexis was busy last night? So the last time we really talked was a couple days ago." She did text him and get left on read... she's sure whatever he was doing was important, though. "It wasn't really about much. I just needed to blow off a little steam."
... Her brow furrows as she realizes she's been caught, because she hadn't made *herself* (or at least, this-herself) obvious in her connection to Alexis.
<Pose Tracker> Riika Sheder has posed.
Riika knew that Alexis had passed on her note to *an* Akane Shinjo, who she'd spoken to by text. She figured she had a fifty percent chance of getting the right one if she just went for it.
And so it paid off; she lets out a breath she didn't realize she was holding.
Riika sits down next to Akane, setting her backpack on her lap so she can get into it. It doesn't take long for her to find what she's looking for: her tablet. She saved a news article on it - an attack on Ptolemaeus Lunar Base by an unknown kaiju.
"Mmm," Riika says, offering the tablet to Akane. "Do you remember what we were talking about, before? Well... I had a lot of time to think after this, and I spent some of it thinking about Alexis. And you, actually. I wanted to make sure you were okay... though that wasn't all of it!"
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Akane's eyes widen as she sees the article on Riika's tablet. She immediately draws two circles in her notebook, connects them, connects them to *another* circle with 'Granada?' written in it, and turns to face her...
... coconspirator? She'll have to go with that for now.
'Why me?' is the question she *wants* to ask; what she *actually* starts at is something else entirely, though. "Did you -- make the kaiju? In this article?" On the one hand, she thinks: good, the Federation deserves it. On the other: what the actual hell?
"Why would I not be okay?" she asks, eyes wide, blinking twice. "Everything's pretty safe here, and whenever anything weird happens... everything resets." Well. Not *everything.* But she doesn't want to tip her hand that far yet.
<Pose Tracker> Riika Sheder has posed.
Riika doesn't consider herself a co-conspirator, but she doesn't make any moves toward correcting Akane's train of thought. If she even thinks about it.
"Yeah," Riika says, a little awkward. "It's not what I usually model, honestly? But Alexis helped me. It's Mecha Trembulor. That's actually why I wanted to talk to you, about..." She isn't quite sure how to put it, and so she trails off, uncertain. She thought about this conversation a lot and she never came up with a satisfactory way to bring it up, figuring she'd wing it.
Past Riika needed to work harder, Riika thinks to herself.
"I mean, I didn't want to talk to you about the name," she hastily corrects. "But I wanted to ask you a couple things, and tell you a couple other things... What's weird around here lately? I haven't exactly been," because she's been in a Federation jail, "and it's not like I can get a news service for Tsutsujidai that would tell me."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
... so Alexis is helping other people make kaiju. Her expression turns serious; she erases the line to the circle she'd created for the new kaiju -- Mecha Trembulor, now, labeled -- and replaces it with a squiggly one with a few question marks around it.
"Weird around here *lately*... well, there was a kaiju attack at a Sheryl Nome concert..." No sense in hiding that one; there were plenty of pilots there, so the news is probably getting around. "And then there was a Betterman attack here at school. The news wouldn't have caught that stuff anyway. I'm pretty much your only source on that."
Her lips purse, then. Another circle, tentatively -- this one blank. "Before that, there was that woman with the orange Mazin-type... I actually kinda made that happen. So she'd get that stuff out of her head." Does ZAFT even know about Triple Zero? ... Not her problem. "But what did you wanna tell me?"
<Pose Tracker> Riika Sheder has posed.
ZAFT might know about it; Riika does not. Nor does she know: "What's a Betterman?" she asks, because she is entirely sure that never came up in military academy. "...You don't mean a Coordinator, right? Because that's kind of insulting if it is, honestly, we don't call ourselves that even as a joke."
Riika doesn't *seem* offended, given how matter-of-fact she said that. It might not even mean what she guessed!
"Huh... I didn't think there was so much happening here! It feels quiet." And, of course, Riika has never been any time it hasn't been, and it's not like the news articles here are ever anything different, thanks to everyone forgetting...
But Akane actually asks, and Riika can tell she is doing so out of more than politeness; she wants to know. "Well - I had a long time to think, like I said. There are kaiju here, right? You can see them, in the distance, and so can I, even if nobody else seems to notice... Do you know where they came from? Because..."
"...I was thinking, if Alexis helped someone make kaiju one place, he could do it somewhere else. And I don't trust him."
"I never did, really." Riika leans back to look up the stairs, sees nobody, straightens back up to a normal sitting position. "But I wanted to. He said he wanted to help, and he gave me gifts. Kaiju, more than one - well, one that I didn't help with, and one that he did. He said he wanted to help me make a world of peace. But..."
"...during that attack." She nods at the tablet. "Mecha Trembulor was going to kill people. It was supposed to eat potential nuclear energy, to make the bombs inert, and to shut down mobile suits that attacked it. But it started to pull the life support electricity - even the backup systems. I tried to stop it, but there wasn't a way to. It was going to kill everyone in the base - "
Riika cuts herself off as her voice rises slightly. "NERV stopped it, and honestly, I'm grateful. But I got to thinking. And I never did find out what Alexis *really* wants, why he showed up to talk to me, specifically. I didn't call him, the first time. Nor did... someone else I know, another girl he talked to. She never made a kaiju, but she knows I did, and..."
"...I don't trust him. He gave me what I thought I wanted, but... a gift like that is poisoned. He made a weapon that can't be controlled, for reasons I don't understand. And - he said he was taking care of a girl." He said more than that, but Riika keeps that quiet for now. "That's you, right? Because I asked him to give the phone number to that girl, and you answered it."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"Huh? No, a Betterman is like -- a kaiju, but not?" Sorting out the jumble of category logic between 'monster' and 'Vessel of Light' in her head that leads Betterman to be kind of a mental BSOD is... honestly not the type of thing she can deal with right this second.
Riika presents her with a lot. Akane can't verbally acknowledge it at first -- not without shutting down totally or freaking out. Conveniently, she has a notebook that needs updating. She draws a few lines. Pulls out a gel pen from her bag. Draws a few more lines. Draws a circle. ('Other girl,' this time.)
"Hmmmm..." Her brow furrows. "I mean, yeah, kaiju definitely go out of control..." she murmurs, at the mention that Riika's kaiju was going to get people killed rather than just do exactly what she wanted.
She leans back slowly, staring forward. If Riika were a little more -- attuned to the world, engaged it in that sideways way that Newtypes do, she might feel the roar; as it is, Akane's expression remains pretty comfortable. Once she's satisfied with the constellation of stars and lines in her notebook, she faces Riika head-on.
"I think you're kind of... hm. It's not that you're a *bad* person," she says, "but you're kind of pathetic. The instant making the world better needs you to actually do something hard that you're not doing in a mobile suit, you freak out?"
Her feelings jumble up -- but Riika is here, and Akane's loyalty to Riika is way, way lower than her loyalty to Alexis. "Alexis works hard for me. He clearly tried to help *you*, too. Would you have felt that bad if your bosses just bombed the moon like normal?"
... talking about real, genuine violence makes Akane a little uneasy -- but she pushes through. She needs Riika to understand that Akane's the strong one here. "Yeah, that was me!" With a pleasant smile and an almost wistful tone, she notes, "Lying through my teeth to sound like some pathetic baby in the OCU the whole time~."
She levels her gaze at Riika. "If you don't have anything else to tell me," she says, "I'd like you to go home. I'm not going to report you to school staff or anything, but, you know. I could~." Still, she *does* need Riika's information... even so... "Now, if you have something other than 'someone gave me the power to change things and I got sad about it,' that's something else, but that part says a lot more about you than it does about him or me."
<Pose Tracker> Riika Sheder has posed.
Riika is no Newtype. She does not have that same connection to the world, though she is pretty good at reading body language and tone. Right now, she's getting more mixed messages from Akane than Akane would probably want, but has no method of getting to the bottom of them.
No method other than intuition or, perhaps, talking. You know, the normal ways.
"I don't want to bomb the Moon," Riika snaps back, with as much even-ness as she can manage. Iron control, or at least bronze. "I want this stupid war to end. I'm just one pilot and maybe there's not much I can do, but what he helped me do was wrong. I don't mind fighting other soldiers," though even then Riika doesn't exactly try for kill shots, "but there were people in that base who had nothing to do with it. Technical staff. Shipbuilding contractors, they make more than just combat vessels - it's one of the places that used to make colony segments, it's one of the really big Lunar shipyards. I think there's an astronomy station nearby. If that's 'doing something hard'... no. What's the point in making the world *better* if you make it *worse* while you get there?"
"If that's what Alexis wants to help with, I don't want to go along with it. Even if I did, at first." Riika's bitterness is aimed more at herself than anyone else.
Akane's tone picks at Riika in a way she hasn't experienced since, perhaps ironically, high school. Some days it feels like there's nothing crueler than a teenaged girl and Riika was pretty much the lowest of her peer group. Poor, not even a very 'perfect' Coordinator judging by her glasses, more of a geek than a popular student... She learned her habits there, and she had to break some of them in military academy.
It hurts but at least it's familiar ground. Except now Riika is an adult, more or less, and Akane isn't. She tries to let it roll past her. It's not easy, even for someone as friendly and cheerful as Riika usually is. Her current emotions aren't helping matters much.
"If you want to call me pathetic, go ahead," Riika says, "it's not like I can stop you and you might even be right. I came here to make sure you were all right, because I don't know what else Alexis was up to, and maybe that's kind of soft of me, given I was thinking about how I was going to do it while I was in prison. But answer me this, before I go."
"What do you want? What's *your* dream that he's helping you with?" Riika looks straight at Akane. Her eyes don't quite focus, they never do, but they are looking right at her with more intensity than Riika's usual soft gaze. "And what's he getting out of doing it for you? Because if you don't know, you really should find out."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
All these people keep acting like Akane is a child -- like she can't take care of herself, like she's some... alien's victim. Riika's angle is at least novel, on this point -- close to Yuta's but not the same. It's difficult to hear, though, by the same token.
... The fact that Riika can't *quite* focus on her actually takes some of the sting out of it; Akane's very much keyed to people's gazes, and Riika's slightly 'off' one keeps her from flinching quite as much. "I don't think my dreams are any of your business... and I'm taking care of mine myself."
She knows, on some level, that her answers don't add up with her other answers -- but sorting out how is honestly beyond her. ... She's just a teenager. "I'm gonna get going. Good luck putting the world back together with no guts!" she enthuses distantly, picking up her notebook and starting to walk away.
Despite cheerily trying to bully Riika off, she has... a lot to think about, and none of it feels good.
<Pose Tracker> Riika Sheder has posed.
Riika understands anyone can get in over their head.
She did, after all. Maybe that's why she's so intent on reaching out again.
"Okay. I get the point," Riika says, standing up herself. She smiles. It looks a little forced this time. It's easy to tell the difference on her. "Just..." What she was originally going to say seems a little... well, exactly like Akane felt like. Like she was treating her like a victim. "...be careful."
"And I'll talk to you again later!" she calls after Akane's back, but she doesn't follow her. Riika can find her own way out, but she's going to give Akane enough time to get out of here before she does that. Instead she repacks the tablet before briskly walking away, turning a different direction once she's back outside of the stairwell.