2022-02-06: Green and Purple
- Log: Green and Purple
- Cast: Euphemia li Britannia, Suzaku Kururugi
- Where: Nagoya, Area 11
- OOC - IC Date: 2022-02-06 - February 6th, U.C. 096
- Summary: In which Euphemia and Suzaku discuss recent events and pretend to work.
<Pose Tracker> Euphemia li Britannia has posed.
Virtually no one is happy with Euphemia li Britannia's little stunt with the Lancelot Club except Euphemia herself, who is, all told, pretty happy with it. It's caused a lot of follow-up work for literally everyone, and had *her* in the G-1 Base's hospital bed instead of her usual place on the way back. She has gotten rather a lot less done than she'd have liked in her Nouvelle Tokyo trip, because she's being monitored extensively now.
The damage *looked* a lot worse than it was, really; people tend to freak out when the princess shows up with the right side of her face covered in blood and her eye screwed shut! But it's just a mid-sized head wound. Well, really more like three of those, right along her hairline; two of them are held together with medical glue, while the third is stitched shut.
At the very least, *now* she's permitted to leave. She heads straight to her office, mostly because... she doesn't really have a choice. She's not being allowed alternatives for the moment.
Despite the fact that it's been two days since she was exposed to absolutely staggering temperatures and significant blood loss and she's *probably* fully rehydrated and mostly okay, Euphemia has an extremely expensive-looking, totally opaque water bottle that hides an enormous amount of sports drink. She sips at it thoughtfully, lets out a small sigh, and gets settled at her desk.
Today's tiny act of rebellion: shredding a requisition request from a known set of Blue Cosmos affiliates for more KMFs to be reassigned from Area 11 to G-Hound. We don't know where it went! Total mystery.
<Pose Tracker> Suzaku Kururugi has posed.
The whole incident had jarred Suzaku, just a little. When he first got word of it he'd reached for his phone-- and then left it alone for a little while. The first message that he actually ended up sending was the evening of the kaiju incursion itself, and the only thing that it contained was a mildly elaborate cat emoji using japanese characters, accompanied by the words GOOD WORK.
It's unusual because he's fairly avoidant of using japanese around Britannians, even in such a small way. Some of them can be fairly sensitive to it-- he's been unlearning it around Euphy, though.
Today, Euphemia li Britannia has an appointment. The appointment is with ASEEC, and the particular person who would be showing up wasn't specified. There's a reason for that, of course.
Euphy having an incident with a Lancelot Club and being talked to by the engineers surrounding the Lancelot project is hardly a surprise. If 'Suzaku Kururugi' is appended to the appointment up front, it's easier to laugh nervously and try to deflect.
Which is also why, when the call comes informing her that the Special Engineering Corps was on their way in, there was a note of aggravation in the voice of the secretary on duty today.
A trio of knocks comes shortly afterwards, accompanied curiously in synchronization with the knocks. The secretary pokes their head in for a moment, and then ushers Suzaku inside, offering customary words of deference to Euphemia-- and probably some quiet intimation to call if any 'help' is needed.
Suzaku flips his cell phone closed as he walks inside, smiling. The door was left open behind him deliberately, but he shuts it without giving it a moment's thought. He's properly uniformed today, because even if it's transparently only on paper, this is a formal function for him. A small parcel with a blue-and-pink sakura print cloth wrapped around it is accompanied by a thin folder. One of his jacket pockets also looks a little over-full.
"You've stirred up a hornet's nest," he comments genially, moving to the far side of the desk and putting his parcel down on it. Out comes the folder, flipped open. Suzaku doesn't hand it to her though; he lays it out and leaves it for the moment, situated so that he'd have to be the one working on it. It looks like actual ASEEC paperwork. A damage report.
"The technicians were having a fit over what was done to the Yggdrasil drive," Suzaku continues. "From the sounds of things, it might become a basis for power plant parameters on the Lancelot mass-production project."
"How are you holding up?" He asks, retrieving one of the conspicuous objects from his jacket pocket. It's a couple of cans of tea from a vending machine in some of the less... Britannia-fied areas of Area Eleven.
Suzaku pushes one across the desk. It's a pretty low-calorie and sugar variant. Even though he's fond of bringing treats, this particular drink seems to be a favorite of his for not being pure liquid garbage. It is currently advertising promos for the in-production Tarabaman; strawberry flavored, of course.
<Pose Tracker> Euphemia li Britannia has posed.
Euphy's own communication has mostly matched pace with Suzaku's; about seven hours later, after she'd had a decent amount of sleep and her wounds handled, she sent back a slightly less elaborate (but still distinctly Japanese) cat kaomoji and a thumbs up sticker. At the very least: it's still Euphy!
Euphemia gives the secretary a carefully neutral look before letting them go without too much further incident. She could dress them down a bit for the sub-rosa layer here, but she doesn't. Even if she's mostly fine, she does need to conserve her energy a bit -- and all things being equal, she'd much rather spend it being excited to see Suzaku again!
"I ran it a... little ragged," she admits, with a light rub at the back of her head. "I heard a little of that, too... the Club is apparently not... actually rated for those weapons, even with all the adjustments made to support them." Euphy accepts the tea; she's much more enthused about it than the sports drink. (Eventually she'll drink all of it; it is a little bit doctor's orders.
"I'm okay. I'm just glad that more people didn't get hurt," she says, after opening the tea and taking a sip. She peers across a little bit at the damage report, but it wouldn't actually tell her much she isn't already very aware of.
She glances off to the side -- then puts her full attention back on Suzaku. "Was that too reckless? The idea of Britannia doing nothing in the face of what might be another Devil Gundam attack, and a kaiju on top of that... it bothered me. It still does."
<Pose Tracker> Suzaku Kururugi has posed.
"A little," Suzaku agrees, pinching two fingers together illustratively. It's hard to tell if he's being serious or not. The damage report in front of him is pretty much what she expects it to be, with the exception that there is a comments section below that has been left empty. Most likely, Suzaku's job here is to fish out some more details.
"The Club has a lot of Sutherland infrastructure in it, so it can't handle the output well if it has the fully upgraded Drive. Or, that's what I was told anyway. I can't say that I really follow most of the particulars," he elaborates, a little.
When she asks him whether or not what she did was reckless, he hums thoughtfully and looks down at the report. "When it comes to the things that people do... there's what you 'can' do and what you 'can't'. Without speaking to ability to execute on those things, it's not strange that faced with a lot of people potentially getting seriously hurt, you would choose to act."
Suzaku opens his tea with a light popping of aluminum separating from aluminum. He looks back at Euphy, and says, "Sorry, but... the impulsive part of you is definitely the one that charmed me the most. You might be asking somebody who can only give you bad advice. But if I have to answer: Moving to prevent the suffering of others when you know you can make a difference is dangerous, but it isn't wrong."
He leans over a little to *tnk* his can against Euphy's in a partly jesting toast. "Even though people don't look at it this way when it comes to battlefield involvement, you're much more powerful than I am in your ability to bring people warmth and safety. Boiling it down to 'can' or 'can't', I can't possibly suffocate a helping spirit like yours."
<Pose Tracker> Euphemia li Britannia has posed.
Euphemia can *kind* of follow the shop talk -- she has a lot of things to sort through, and some of it is indeed in the penumbra of shop talk. Things like that are *more* likely to end up on Cornelia's desk if they go this far, but they're not foreign to Euphy. She ultimately agrees, "That sounds right," she eventually says.
Tip. Tink. Euphy's lips quirk up in a playful little smile, despite the slightly heavy subject matter. "I think that's kind of you. I've had a lot of time to think about it myself over the last few days..." She seems -- still happy, as she notes, "I was thinking the same thing, but it's nice to hear it from someone else."
Still, though... She scoots her chair up a little, tenting her hands and putting her chin on them, still looking at Suzaku. "A lot of people told me I should retreat, but... if I'd retreated, so would the G-1 Base." She's happy enough to be talking to Suzaku that the gloom of the thought doesn't get to her, but it *is* pretty gloomy.
"Is that common among Britannian soldiers...? The sense that our strength is only supposed to serve the elite? You're the only one I know who isn't part of the G-1 Base's crew complement." She knows she's asking this of someone who's *also* an outsider to the Britannian system -- but then, that might make him better at identifying it.
<Pose Tracker> Suzaku Kururugi has posed.
"I'm happy to say it to you, but I wish that I wasn't the only voice you were hearing it from," Suzaku says, a little sadly. He reaches over the desk to pull his parcel closer and bobs it up and down lightly. "Hungry? It's light, I promise."
'If I'd retreated, so would the G1-Base.'
"Your soldiers didn't think Japanese were worth the sortie," he ascertains immediately. It isn't with bitterness that he makes the observation, though. Suzaku tugs lightly at the cloth cover and opens his bento, leaving it sitting out on the desk for the moment. There's a couple of small salmon flake onigiri and buns of uncertain filling.
"It's hard for people who have decided they're in different 'tribes' to be kind to one another," he says. "That's a problem we had even before the war. Area Eleven's holdouts before the Black Knights were mostly made up of groups like that. So it's not just Britannian soldiers. But... yeah. Decently common."
"I've read a little about the history of Numbers becoming properly integrated," Suzaku explains. "Valor and martial prowess seem to be a common thread in acceptance. For those in the military, I'm sure camraderie will eventually work itself out. It's hard not to eventually like people you're fighting beside, after a while, even if it's grudging. Officers -- commissioned and otherwise -- are usually more educated and a little more open-minded if they're not a part of the purist factions."
"The Special Engineering Corps is my first experience with an irregular unit. They mostly don't care where they are or who they help as long as they get to tinker," he adds, his voice laced with more than a little amusement. "If I had to characterize where the contempt is aimed, it's not just at specific groups, even though who has been fought recently colors it a lot. It comes down to contempt for the weak."
"There are," Suzaku sighs, setting his tea aside for the moment, "a lot of ways to be considered weak by soldiers. The 'elite' are excluded for a lot of reasons."
But the gloom clears from Suzaku's face, and he smiles brightly down at Euphemia. "Thank you for taking care of them, Euphy."
<Pose Tracker> Euphemia li Britannia has posed.
"It's not that I'm hungry, necessarily, but I do need to eat something," Euphemia says, brightly. Her eyes track the parcel, and she sits up a little straighter again. As much as she enjoys mooning over Suzaku a bit, she still feels the reflexive need to be at least a *little* proper while eating. (She can turn it off consciously -- but right now she has something else eating up that emotional energy.)
Euphy nods at the mention of Area Eleven's holdouts. She reads Cornelia's after action reports. She knows about the wide array of suspiciously well-equipped groups with an emotional connection to the samurai and Japan's particular engagement with martial culture. "I think that's hopeful, but it's a little sad, too. Uniting just to fight... can people really only come together if they have a common enemy?"
Euphy's answer is written in her conversation with the Black Knights' Beast, of course. But she has to acknowledge the challenges to her answer. "The Federation is always at its most together when it faces a threat from space, too..." ... that goes some dark places. So she pivots. "Regardless -- I don't think people should have to be strong to smile."
She lets out a breath, and says, "NERV seems very happy with the results, at least. ... Thank you."
She pivots topics. The gloom breaking on Suzaku makes it break for her, too. "You've thought a lot about Area integration... do you have any thoughts on things we could do to ease things for civilians?" That *is* her wheelhouse, unlike piloting -- and it's an area that's fresh in her mind, after her experience in Nouvelle Tokyo.
<Pose Tracker> Suzaku Kururugi has posed.
"Apetite a bit of out of sorts?" Suzaku wonders, but he doesn't linger on the matter for the moment.
Regarding the coming together of peoples, he shakes his head. "A common enemy brings people together like... gravity. It's something that everyone has to deal with, so they do. For a little while it can even ease tensions. But not even Axis Shock was enough to keep them from falling back apart again. We can't rely on outside threats to unite us."
"No," he agrees, "they shouldn't. It's thinking like that, and acting on it, that can fix what's broken with us."
Suzaku abandons his place on the opposite side of the desk, moving to lean up against it just to one side of Euphy's seat. He pats her shoulder, perhaps in answer to her gratefulness-- or simply because he thinks she needs the positive contact.
"There's a lot of rebuilding that needs to be done, and demolition of unsafe buildings as well. What would probably help the most right now is the clean-up of basic amenities -- water services, electricity -- in places where the damage is light and most of the problems are being caused by neglect," Suzaku suggests. He unpockets his cell phone, pulls up a map, and puts it down face-up on the desk. It's mostly the area where Clovis engaged with the prototypical Black Knights-- and massacred a bunch of people. "This area has a lot of collateral damage that is relatively minor. The enemy's primary strategy there was exploiting structural flaws in the area and luring our Sutherlands into clustering where minor damage would induce collapses."
"A lot of Elevens are living in poor conditions because Britannia has been historically averse to re-development, and private developers won't touch it while insurgents are still a serious threat," he explains. "In terms of social transition... it's hard to say. Most Elevens would rather have peace, but they don't like Britannians either. Mis-stepping with Britannian residents or tourists can really impact their ability to make a living. Some sort of initiative to have Eleven and Britannian civilians working together would be good, but it would require parity that the system doesn't usually encourage. Otherwise, the Elevens are on-edge and the Britannians assert themselves too strongly. Basically, they need to be socialized with each other on equal terms."
Suzaku nudges Euphemia playfully, diverting the topic a little. "Where do you want to slip off to when you're not on maximum security alert? Johannesburg was nice."
<Pose Tracker> Euphemia li Britannia has posed.
"I think it's mostly about the blood loss. I'm eating what I usually eat, and I'm not hungry, but I should probably eat a little more," Euphy says, though she doesn't sound worried about it. If anything, she's kind of amused; it certainly gives her an appreciation for the immense demands piloting places on Suzaku's body.
Euphemia is *delighted* at the positive contact; she puts an arm around Suzaku... then stands to give him an actual hug. It perks her up a lot. "That was my first thought, too," she says, looking down at the map. She instantly has some thoughts, after her experience in Nouvelle Tokyo; if they moved even a modest amount of military infrastructure in, they could justify a *massive* amount of investment in shelters and basic amenities simply under the auspices of keeping that infrastructure supplied. She doesn't voice them just yet, though. "I think water is the most important thing right now."
The social transition, though -- that's the hard part. Euphemia will need to think a lot on that -- that's... possibly not bigger than she is, but getting it *working* might be. Instead of agonizing -- she's done a lot of good this week, and other than a few stumbles, feels pretty good about herself! So it's fine for her to think about doing something a little more... pleasant.
"I've heard about a bridge where you can see some very distinctive tidal whirlpools!" Euphemia says, excitedly. "I think it's near... Awaji Island? The water was very strikingly green in some of the pictures..."
Euphemia looks up into Suzaku's green eyes, taking one of his hands in hers. "It sounds -- intense, but very reliable. No matter how much the world changes, it's always moving -- four times a day, every day." Her other hand comes up to her mouth, and she giggles. "I'd really like to see it, next time we can sneak away."
<Pose Tracker> Suzaku Kururugi has posed.
Suzaku makes an acknowledging noise, with respect to the blood loss. A flicker of concern passes across his features, but he doesn't let it linger. He knows that it's hard to be worried about; it's something that's caused him to keep secrets.
There's been a period of time between them where Suzaku was very definitely adjusting to the fact that 'Euphy' was 'Princess Euphemia'. The contact that he would initiate was a little tentative -- almost but not quite invisibly so, and there were traces of that just now. When contact was made with him however, he would typically lean into it.
Today, it's really not a surprise anymore when it happens.
A flicker of 'huh?' as Euphy stands comes and goes from Suzaku's expression in an instant. A hint of a chuckle -- more of an amused breath, perceptible primarily because Euphy hugs him -- passes between his lips. Somewhere in the back of Suzaku's mind, ribbonlike fetters echoing the thought, 'Is this actually okay?' melt away.
Suzaku squeezes Euphy encouragingly, beaming down at her. Somewhere a bit beneath the surface, he definitely needed that, even if he's not really capable of perceiving it properly.
"This feels familiar," he remarks, glancing meaningfully back towards the window before meeting Euphy's gaze again.
"Awaji island? That sounds..." His line of thinking is derailed, both by the taking of his hand and the decidedly sideways flirting. Suzaku blinks.
The metaphor deepens. He blinks again. Now is the moment where an easily embarrassed or imperceptive young man would most certainly misunderstand, or at the very least sputter and disengage.
Suzaku takes Euphemia's hand between his own and inclines his head a little. "I understand. I'll be sure to make the appropriate arrangements--"
The faintest spark of mischief blazes there for a moment. That wasn't a complete sentence-- the rhythm of his breath is off and there's a soft click of teeth as he reverses course.
"My time slot is almost up. Is there anything I can do for you today?" He asks. The question is broad, and broadly-meant. Suzaku knows she's under a lot of pressure; if he can help relieve it within whatever boundaries they're acting within today, he'd like to.
He does not let go of her hand.
<Pose Tracker> Euphemia li Britannia has posed.
Euphemia li Britannia does as she wants. Sometimes what Euphemia li Britannia wants is to risk herself for others' sake; sometimes it's to be with someone she cares about. This moment -- it might be a little of both. "It's perfect, right? It's got a great mix of sights."
Euphy picks up, in her way, on the subtle shift in Suzaku. She's really, genuinely happy to see it; she'd have a hard time articulating it *exactly*, but she tends to think people are at their best when they're able to care in spontaneous ways. She catches the spark of mischief, too.
She keeps holding that hand for a few seconds more, as Suzaku speaks -- and then gives it a final squeeze before letting go. They both have things to attend to; it's a big world, and one that prevents them from having each other *fully* to themselves.
"... Get yourself something nice for dinner?" she asks, a little playfully, at the final question. It's not an order -- she knows full well a soldier's schedule can make it hard to make time for a good, robust meal. But the feeling behind it is clear -- she wants to make sure Suzaku's taking care of *himself*, too.
Moving to situate herself at her desk, she remembers to add, "I'll do my best to review the documents here and forward my own opinions about the Lancelot Club's performance to ASEEC." There *was* a reason for this meeting besides flirting, after all.
<Pose Tracker> Suzaku Kururugi has posed.
"It is," Suzaku agrees, enthusiastically. "But it's missing a splash of purple."
Her hand slips free of his, and he plucks up his phone and the particular tea he had brought. For some reason, Suzaku apparently decides to finish it on the spot and does so. It's a little awkward, but Euphy can get a sense that there is an intent behind not carrying a beverage with him, at the very least. He pockets the rapidly-emptied can.
Instructed to eat well, he chuckles. "I'll be fine. I'm pretty particular about my diet, when I'm at home. Lloyd's the one you have to look out for."
He secures his phone in a buttoned pocket, and looks down towards the clipboard he brought. Suzaku looks back up at Euphy, and replies, "That's not work for you to do. It's work for me to forget and, with sincere and profuse apologies, have to return for."
Suzaku moves... to the window. He opens it, flashes a smile at Euphemia, and slips out-- feeling rather pleased with himself all the while.