2022-06-28: A Tour of the Grounds
- Log: 2022-06-28- A Tour of the Grounds
- Cast: Lune Zoldak, Milly Ashford
- Where: Ashford Academy
- OOC - IC Date: 0096-06-28
- Summary: Lune Zoldak pops into Britannia's Area 11 peeking around for something within it. She ends up enrolling in school.
<Pose Tracker> Lune Zoldak has posed.
It is a wonderful day in Nagoya prefecture, because it is always wonderful when your city is the capital of colonial rule in the "Area 11" zone of Greatest Britain(nia). With the Dreisstrager stationed in the Pacific theatre, it's not difficult for crewmembers and pilots to take leaves and missions in the nearby zones.
Whether or not the Federal Forces made a contact statement about the Quaestors and their threat-projection abilities, the feeling of simply needing to get away from the black obelisk that kills grid squares becomes momentarily overwhelming for one Lune Zoldak. . .
So she has returned to the abandoned crater of her life before the fall under the thin pretext of hunting a lingering Relic signal within the borders of Nagoya.
Most people on the Ship-of-Ships know better than to get in Lune's way. The ones that don't are either lucky or soon-to-be-unlucky.
Out of place in her 'usual' outfit of the 3/5ths of a pair of pants you aren't expecting, red slippers, white tank top, and bandanna, she looks cut straight from the ~~Kendo~~ HISTORICAL BRITANNIAN MARTIAL ARTS club. She even carries her ~~katana~~ HISTORICAL BRITANNIAN CURVED OFFICER SABER, in a blue sword-bag held taut closed with a black string draw that loops cross-wise across her shoulder.
Holding her smart-device in both hands, she thumbtypes deeply annoyed.
"No. Cancel." Silence. "Okay, Tesla." Bing! "Cancel guidance." Silence. "Cancel current route." Silence. "Can-" If you'd like to submit a command, say 'Okay, Tesla'.
Lune spikes her device into the ground where it promptly explodes into glass and metal flinders.
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
Getting out of Ashford Academy *usually* proves good for Milly -- and as it happens, she has sword-related needs now, because she extracted a blood price of 'a bunch of cool samurai things' for the unfortunate responsibility of 'sabotaging yet another of her marriage interviews.'
This means she's in the same general range of trajectories as Lune, as it happens -- just in time for her to hear Lune spike her smart device, and then subsequently see the aftermath.
She makes her way over, clad in her usual Ashford uniform; today isn't exactly an Occasion Day. "Well! That's one way to shut it up when it leads you into a checkpoint," Milly says, a wry smile on her face. "Hmmm... new student? Or just a curious visitor?" Lune is a little younger than Milly herself is, by her casual estimate, and she's here, which says a lot.
They do seem to have a lot of the latter, lately, Milly reflects; that might be Ashford opening up a little bit because of GUTS, but it could be something else, too... she doesn't sweat what it *could* be, though. If that information becomes important to have, she's got her ways of getting it.
<Pose Tracker> Lune Zoldak has posed.
Lune, from behind, sets at the right hip as her weight shifts. Her right hand lifts to her brow, thumb and ring finger lifting her bangs and sweeping them back, pinching the tips down into a ponytailing ring, and then releases, with her hair swept back. Lifting her left hand, she smacks a thin device-band on her wrist, and--
'... a checkpoint...'
"I get waved through checkpoints." Lune states matter-of-factly, and turns her torso in a gentle coil to give a one-eyed look to:
Milly Ashford.
Lune's expression narrows, in consideration, her one blue gaining in intensity as it is joined by its pair when the blond turns more fully around with a heel quarter-pivot.
"I'm looking at college options. If you care about which I am among those two--" Lune points. "Student administrator?"
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
"Ooh! Well, we do have a lot of programmatic education -- we started as just a high school, but we've been steadily expanding. I'm working my way through our journalism and climatology programs myself," Milly answers, which makes it briefly sound like she's an *actual* administrator -- but she cops, a moment later, to: "Student Council President, three years running," with a wry smile.
This means either that she somehow snagged that position as a first-year *or* that she's a supersenior.
"So! Who've I got the pleasure of talking to?" She grins her usual catlike grin, before thinking to add: "Oh, I'm Milly Ashford. Do you want me to show you around?" It wouldn't be the first campus tour she's given; she remembers quite a few of them pretty fondly, even.
<Pose Tracker> Lune Zoldak has posed.
Staring at Milly, now fully turned around, Lune crosses her arms loosely and comes down off her inspecting intensity. She doesn't get to a bow, but a nod follows. "Lady Ashford." Her chin dips. "I should have recognized you." A smile for appearances as chin rises, that barely lifts her cheeks. "My apologies."
Inside Lune's mind, she screams and gnashes her teeth. She can remember someone at one of her dad's conferences FOREVER, but she can't remember who the person running the school's daughter?! A priority person? A true VIP???
Lune's facade is immaculate. Milly's words bounce off Lune's cheeks like deflecting vulcan rounds. Journalism? Climatology? Her conversational auto-guard activates. "Do you want to be a weather reporter?"
A first year Student Council President election is easy to imagine, especially chased with a smile, from the person with their name on the building.
"I'm Lune." She pauses. "Zoldak." Added, weighed for if she should say it or let the 'Lady' Ashford realize it herself and spare her embarrassment. "I'd like that, sure. Show me around, my Lady." Lune smirks, reshouldering the band of the long bag across her shoulder.
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
Milly waves her off. "It's not like you're talking to my grandfather or my mother," she says, with a shake of her head. "Milly's fine. This place gets kind of stuffy if everyone is 'Lady Ashford' or 'Marchioness Kewell.'" Milly pinches the bridge of her nose for just a moment, before affirming, "If you really need a title, how about Miss Prez?"
The topic of weather reporting... "I'm still kind of deciding that," Milly answers. "I want to leave myself with some options for when I graduate. Climate science, war reporting, weather reporting... there's a lot of options there, and I'm not interested in overcommitting." ... Or maybe she's just not interested in committing at all, but that's neither here nor there.
"Oh! Are you Bian's daughter?" Milly asks, blinking at the introduction. "My grandfather co-authored with him... I want to say a little before I was born? I can't actually make heads or tails of the paper." She knows to be impressed, though.
She starts walking toward the Student Council building, saying, "The Student Council building is the campus's pride and joy, and also serves as the ballroom." Giving the Extended Spiel doesn't really seem necessary... or as interesting as anything else they could talk about. But they can at least get a change of scenery.
<Pose Tracker> Lune Zoldak has posed.
"So is it stuffy?" Lune asks, her auto-guard being replaced by real wit. If this place was harsh on someone like Milly, it wouldn't be worth the effort of attendance, and thus - more suited for Mitsuba to just lean on the place with Federal authority to allow a bunch of hazmats to do an inspection and find something awful and feature in a very nice report two people will ever read before being sealed in a vault with all the other reports nobody will ever read about events nobody will avow happened and only circumstantial evidence would remain even suggesting such non-actions happened.
So, you know, Thule Society Thursdays at Ashford.
"Don't be a war reporter." Lune begins, with a start, firm. No, intense. Stepping forward, around the Student Council Building's entrance, Lune takes Milly's hand and stares into her eyes.
"Don't become a war reporter. You have much more power than someone who runs towards danger without any protection. If you have a duty, if you have to go and see all that yourself, then at least don't do it helplessly."
The moral concern in her eyes narrows. "And if you're not doing it because you care, then you're just propoganda."
She brightens back to a more casual conversational. "Yes, Bian Zoldak's daughter. If it's a paper my old man co-authored, you should try a programme in physics and material science."
As if she didn't just.
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
"I certainly don't *let* it get stuffy," Milly answers, a little playfully -- but then she trips into something Lune's passionate about. She's momentarily startled, but not in a particularly bad way; her eyes do widen a bit, but... in a lot of ways, this is why she volunteers information. When someone actually does something in response to casual conversation, it tells you a lot about what they value.
"... You're right," Milly concedes, with a small nod. "I think it's important that someone witnesses it and tells it honestly, but... even if I went that route, I don't want to become some Hi-TV talking head." Being confronted with the most thoughtless version of that trajectory gets Milly to more firmly orient on more thoughtful ones.
"... Hmmm," she murmurs, at the idea of going for physics instead. It raises a spectre, a bit: that of actually getting enough credits in the right configuration to graduate. "It's definitely worth considering," she agrees, remaining carefully noncommittal as they head past the Student Council building. Milly points herself, instead, toward the practice building.
The topic of Bian requires her to work her way around -- slowly -- to a slightly gentler tone. "Is that something *you're* interested in? Materials science, particle physics. We do have a program in it... one of my friends is a standout student even as a s --" A hitch. "Third year."
<Pose Tracker> Lune Zoldak has posed.
"There's no honest telling in war." Lune remains firm, oscillating between conversational and intense as free motions - a tension that moves towards and away from the surface at need, present within her without the need for conjuration. A base state.
"There's just the people that were there, and the people that weren't. The vultures that pick if over after-" A personal flare of injury. "-aren't worth bothering yourself with. If you want to change things, learn engineering - or a martial art."
She rolls her sword-bearing shoulder. The walk to the practice building doesn't change the air for Lune: practice and administration are the same general field.
"I have hands-on experience with a lot of the topics. My dad started me early - something to do with 'not wasting neuroplasticity on babytalk'."
A picture is painted RAPIDLY.
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
There's part of Milly that wants to take exception -- but no, she gets this, actually. She rapidly gets a picture of Lune as someone who values action, but in a distinct way from the petty Britannian understanding of valuing action -- and she doesn't really mind that at all. After all: she also places a high premium on action, just... slightly sideways.
Besides: "not wasting neuroplasticity on baby talk" is certainly a picture, and it may be one that actually catches her off guard.
It rapidly changes her image of Lune... and maybe makes her a little suspicious of her fellow scientist-scion, but she can kick that one down the road. "Martial art... we do have a kendo club, *and* a fencing club." She gives a slight gesture with her head toward the sword. "I bet you'll feel right at home."
<Pose Tracker> Lune Zoldak has posed.
Lune has no ability to read into minds, and Milly gives the sword-shouldering blond no danger waves at all. A shiny-eyed bunny-rabbit. Floppy, in a harmless way.
Perfectly safe!
"I fight monsters." The Zoldak grins. "I didn't think it'd be kendo, actually. Any strong fighters, or just a bunch of hobbyists? I'd actually think there's some notable ones around here, with all the knights and nobles." Grinning, Lune's eyes lid as she daydreams about sword boys. "I heard the Princess' knight goes to school here." She had wanted to avoid him, but maybe a little kendo ogling would do her heart well. "I meant for self defense, though. Fencing and Kendo are exercise and discipline sports. I meant real self-defense."
BBSYS: Post 53, 'Balance Tweaks 6-29-2022' has been published to Announcements.
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
"Hmmm... you know, I'm not actually sure? I haven't done much looking -- most of the ones I paid the most attention to were the third-years last year, and most of them graduated out from under me." There's a couple stragglers besides Milly herself. It's inevitable in the Universal Century that some people's school schedules end up wobbling a bit.
"Oh -- you know Suzaku?" Then again: he *is* gaining a lot of notoriety for his protection of the Sub-Viceroy; that much even Milly knows. "Anyway -- hmmm. Is there a martial art you'd recommend?"
Milly's biggest advantage is height; at 5'10" she's taller than a not-insignificant number of even Britannian men, and she's got those relatively long limbs. If Lune's paying attention (which she no doubt is), she'll also notice that despite being pretty slender, Milly's got clear conditioning and surprising muscle tone hidden there, too; she isn't an *athlete* but she might already be graciously described as at least a little athlet*ic*.
<Pose Tracker> Lune Zoldak has posed.
"There's always people in the rankings, but if they're not part of your circle, you probably don't know." Lune agrees. At this point, she just believes this school lets you keep going until you're done. That's school, right? You keep going until you're done.
"I know of him-" Suzaku. "-and how he was trained by some warriors himself. The son of the Prime Minister, right? We met once, when my father was settling matters for the Japan facility." The one that got bombed.
'Is there a martial art you'd recommend?' "That depends on you."
Drawing out her sword from the bag by flipping up the flap, Lune extends the blade out wrapped-hilt first towards Milly. "How comfortable are you, harming others? Enough to hold a weapon?"
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
That's more or less true! You keep going until you're done, and Milly is now in the process of kicking 'done' down the road indefinitely. "My friends are more in the Gymnastics and Swim clubs," Milly admits, truthfully. She lets the topic of Suzaku skate a little; that's a little on the dark side, and she doesn't want to pick at a wound that's still less than a year old.
The question is more interesting, anyway. "I've encouraged people to trip themselves or embarrass themselves... but I get that you're asking about the kinds of harm that last a little longer than a bone bruise," comes Milly's first, reflexive answer. It actually forces her to evaluate herself: How comfortable *is* she, harming others?
"... I don't want to become a killer. I get that sometimes you need to hurt people to stop something from getting worse, but..." She glances off. It's been a week for remarkably demanding prompts *to Milly*, it feels like. "You can't know why other people are doing things, so unless the cost of inaction is something I can't handle, I don't want to cultivate power *just* to hurt people."
She doesn't dwell -- and indeed, she gives Lune a smile, standing still between the practice building and the main building. "... You're pretty confronting. I like that."
<Pose Tracker> Lune Zoldak has posed.
Lune doesn't let it sit. "I'm asking you, Milly Ashford, if you could draw a weapon meant to hurt people, permanently, for any reason. If you don't want to be a killer, for any reason, you can't fight."
Her left hand grips tightly about the bag, a soft strain of cloth audible in a seam pulling peel from tension. "If you can't bear it--"
She maneuvers the blade-handle up and lifts the gleaming-bright blade two inches out of the sheath, so that the reflective face splits an eye from the opposite's sight, and reflects their own - and the end and tsuba, above. "Don't even think of fighting. It's a line to cross. Are you willing to live with the power to harm, permanently, on purpose? To have a say in how someone else begins their fall, but not their end?"
'You're pretty confronting. I like that'.
Lune three-quarters grins, smiling for the situation behind the ill-concealing mirror of her blade across her face. "I'm just leading you on. You already said you would - if you're willing to trip someone on purpose, you're willing to permanently harm. It's that simple. You can determine how they start their fall, but not their state at the end. It's a matter you take into your own hands, but not a result."
She clicks down her sword and starts re-wrapping the slightly torn bag, good humor back like a godray through stormclouds, or the eye of a tempest. "I'm thinking stick and staff fighting. It'll be good with gymnastics, and finding something to hold would be easy. A practical weapon for a power you're not *just* using to hurt people."
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
The point Lune makes is an interesting one -- strictly speaking, while humiliating her latest mother-required date is a bit of play-acting... there's a lot that can go wrong when you trip someone, actually! Maybe there's a little more killer instinct in Milly Ashford than she'd initially thought about.
She watches the blade, but more than that, she listens. "Hmmm -- crosstraining with Shirley... that actually sounds pretty nice." Is Milly already thinking about ways to turn this perverse?
Well, it's Milly, so: Yeah. Yeah, she is.
"If you want to start a practical self-defense club at Ashford... well, five members, but I don't think you'll have any trouble finding them," she eventually concludes. "And while I don't let myself participate full-time in any club, because it calls my objectivity into question... I could certainly find the time to stop by." She nods, a smirk on her face.
"So -- do you want me to take you straight up to the enrollment office, or do you want more of the tour?"
<Pose Tracker> Lune Zoldak has posed.
Lune re-shoulders her weapon, dimly aware that 'swinging around a deadly weapon at the person with their name on all the buildings' was a losing play to be caught doing.
"The enrollment office is fine. You can finish the tour once the process starts." Lune winks at Milly. "I've seen at least one thing worth exploring while I was here."
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
"My my... it seems we've got another competitive student," Milly offers, playfully, as she starts to lead Lune over toward the administrative building -- not actually far, and one of the places she has to take her *anyway*. "I look forward to seeing just how serious you are."
She declines to elaborate further.