2022-07-02: And into the darkness, stumble
- Log: 2022-07-02: And into the darkness, stumble
- Cast: Yuliana Dispersal, Arriety Hearn, Puru Two
- Where: Ravnui - A Dingy and Rainy Side Street
- OOC - IC Date: 0096-07-02
- Summary: Yuliana Dispersal menaces an innocent person, Arriety and Puru Two take offense to this. Puru Two learns a valuable lesson about having your ESP forcibly shut off.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Yuliana had a delightful date today with her wonderful girlfriend who she'd give the world to (work in progress). One might ask, in fact, whether she was in Ravnui purely for that purpose, and Yuliana would naturally respond in the affirmative.
Yuliana would, of course, also be lying.
It's the dead of night now, though, in this sleepy town in Ravnui. The streets are empty -- the hotels are closed; a light patter of rain, threatening to swell, is keeping people inside.
Most people, that is. Baroquel Kirchoff, runaway daughter of Kirchoff Industries turned guerilla journalist, is hurrying through the damp streets in an obscuring raincoat. She's hurrying forward, which means she doesn't quite notice a figure in the shadows on the other side of the bridge --
Until she steps out, anyway. Captain Yuliana Dispersal tosses her umbrella carelessly aside, to grab Baroquel by the wrist before she can turn and BOLT in the other direction. (She really looks as if she'd like to, judging by the yank.) "Ah, dear Baroquel!" Yuliana exclaims, brightly, a tone of voice entirely mismatched to the way she pulls the young woman about to press the small of her back into the railing of the bridge.
(They had to rebuild it, a decade and change ago. The waterways all... changed, back then. It does a convincing job of looking old, just like everything in this town looks old.)
"Get off of me! HEL--" Baroquel yells, only for the sound to muffle in the middle, as Yuliana claps a hand over her mouth.
"Oh, I don't think you want to do that," she tells her, still entirely cheerful, as the rain slicks her dark teal hair to her face. "You don't suppose we only found you, hm? Oh, no, no, no, we've found Adam just the same. Cooperate a little more, won't you?" Baroquel -- who, as it happens, has a boyfriend -- narrows her eyes, and nods, with a deep scowl.
"You are with the government?" She asks, with a deep Zaftran accent, and is, at least, quieter, even when Yuliana nods. "We have done nothing wrong. Our conditions are untenable!"
"Sweetheart, it would have been fine if you were just holding a party in the middle of the street now and then. But using daddy's business contacts to try and undermine the Republic -- mmm, wouldn't you call that a spot of espionage?" Yuliana leans forward, which means, necessarily, that Baroquel has to lean back -- and in the middle of a bridge, that's quite a ways to fall down to the river below. Perhaps not fatal, but deeply... unpleasant. "You must be aware of the gravity of your actions, or else you wouldn't have run out here."
"You are here to silence me?" Baroquel asks, and can't quite hide the nervousness in her voice, even with her clear distaste.
Yuliana smiles. "Oh, that depends entirely on your compliance," she assures her, and leans... just a little... further... in.
<Pose Tracker> Arriety Hearn has posed.
Arriety seems like the last kind of person you'd expect to find out on the streets of a sleepy Ravnui town, after the hotels have all closed, out in the threateningly burgeoning rain...
Aaaaaand.... you'd be right! Normally, there'd absolutely be no way she'd be out here. But she's not on her own, she's here with her sister, Callisto Diana, on... on... actually, she didn't ask Callie because Callie absolutely is the one who'd have picked up on the actual mission dossier and intel.
She stuck along as the sidekick because she felt something intensely bad about this. She's a Brave series character, you know.
Arriety's dressed in a long, black raincoat with the hood up at the moment when she hears the yell, and turns and goes, "Sis!" and starts running in the rain. This is incredibly dangerous! she thinks to herself. She doesn't even have a gun! She doesn't even know how to operate a gun! She--
Has something possibly better than a gun?
Fortunately, while two dim figures on a bridge in the middle of the night might be normally difficult for her to pick out, the unmistakable, slightly vertigo-inducing sphere of Nothingness on her mentalscape is actually a lot easier to spot.
Her plan?
"Myrme! Go for the middle of that field!"
And thus, on this night in a sleepy town in Ravnui: Arriety orders a physically-dense quasi-metallic bean-shaped bug to freefall butt-first on Yuliana from above.
<Pose Tracker> Puru Two has posed.
Londo Bell's mission statement has something to do with maintaining peace and order in Space and the Colonies, or somesuch nonsense. What business does Londo Bell have down here, on Earth, at this time of year, in Ravnui?
>> EARLIER
Puru Two is wearing a black Ad*das track jacket and a ball cap, and is answering a call on a payphone in the middle of the street that has fortutiously rung while she is near. If that sounds strange, well, you're correct. That is strange.
"This is Two. Did you find the parcel?" she cradles the phone between cheek and shoulder, eyeing the streetlights outside. A muffled voice on the end of the line indicates an affirmative. "Right. And I'll be back in space to make the pickup in four days."
She hangs up, not wanting to keep Arriety waiting. She adjusts her cap and departs the phone booth, hands in her jacket pockets.
>> NOW
Callisto's little errand only took a minute, after all, so she's back with Arriety before long. "Intelligence always feels like this." she grumbles to her little sister-figure, though not truly upset or anything. "Oh well. Next time, let's tell them to send--"
Arriety takes off at a run and calls out for her at the same time. What the! The clone takes a moment to follow the girl's gaze, and a moment further for her ears to pick up the distant sound of unfriendly conversation. The words are lost on her, but the tone--perhaps carried on more than just the breeze, if you dig what I mean--spurs her to action.
"Arriety, wait!" she yanks both hands from her jacket and sprints after them, drawn into the horizon of this little conflict. Perhaps she can't yet feel the yawning void. Can she?
If not, oh, what SIGHTS and SENSATIONS await her once she can!
(Also she definitely came strapped.)
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Things Yuliana might have expected to come screaming through the rain:
1) A gunshot
2) A car
3) A giant robot
Things Yuliana did not expect to come screaming through the rain:
1) That.
With a ferocious BONN-NNNNN-NNNNK, a bean-shaped bug collapses atop Yuliana's head. "What the--?!" She yelps, staggering back and grasping her forehead, momentarily blinded by (tick all that apply): (/) rage, (/) pain, (/) surprise, or (/) alarm.
Having released Baroquel to do that, said young woman ducks out from between Yuliana and the edge of the bridge, running down the path. "T--thank you!" She yells over her shoulder at whatever intervened... but perhaps understandably, she's disinclined to stick around and introduce herself.
Yuliana shakes her head, and draws a handgun from an obscured fold of her jacket, pointing it squarely at -- "Bug?" She interrogates, disbelieving, which certainly stops her from shooting Myrme in the moment. "Is this a joke?"
As for the field Arriety yelled about --
According to psychic senses, there is no woman on the bridge. According to psychic senses, there is nothing on the bridge. This is not the difficulty to read of dark text on black, but the all-consuming emptiness of a black hole, consuming and erasing all empathic matter around it. This complete incapacity to be read, as it happens, is something which only feels worse if they approach Yuliana; at first there is a twilight, around her, a precipice of unsettling feelings and numbness, before -- about two metres out from her, or the length of melee range -- everything abruptly
goes
silent.
But surely no one would try that, in this situation.
<Pose Tracker> Arriety Hearn has posed.
To be honest, Arriety does worry about the entirely different world that her sister Callisto lives in sometimes; a world of espionage and secret phone calls, of whispers from people without faces, from names that aren't really names, of codes that don't make the slightest bit of sense to her. But... some part of her thinks it's kinda cool too. And she wants to be supportive of her elder sis' line of work.
It's definitely not in her milieu to interrupt, or run off and become a problem of her own.
Myrme bonks against the assailant and Baroquel chases herself off, and--
"Aiee! D-don't shoot me!" Myrme raises her stubby little paws up, even as she floats with her skittering insect wings up and down.
A pause. "Wait, I'm not sure what happens if I get shot... aah! Whatever! Arriety you owe me big for this!"
The insect tries to lunge at Yuliana next and, uh, take a bite out of her handgun as the younger girl chases up to essentially run into the cloud of nothingness upon the bridge itself. Once more, that feeling of numbness and vertigo hits her, but she's not unfamiliar with it: she's felt this feeling once.
"Y-you're...!" Arriety speaks up, unaware Myrme's already tipped her name and also unaware that her creepy red eyes glow in the dark, which is an incredibly bad thing when your assailant has a gun in her hand.
<Pose Tracker> Puru Two has posed.
Callisto has thrown all caution to the wind because it sounds like there was a fight brewing, and that's before Arriety was thrown into the mix. As such, she does not run towards the danger as she does fly. A human-shaped missile released from an invisible slingshot, except dressed like a football lout.
"Myrme, be careful!" Callisto yells, chapeau firmly tugged on tight as she sprints past the fleeing Baroquel at a 100m record pace, while the metallic beanbug uses Tackle! (It's Super Effective, if only because who expects it!?)
The flash of a handgun being drawn sets off several well-trained routines in her head. Even if there's not much light for it to actually flash off of, a mind trained for war (and little else!) is trained to sniff such things out in all cases. Like a loyal guard dog.
That's about as far as she gets, though, because the moment she steps close enough to the Galactic Woman of Mystery, Yuliana Dispersal, it's like someone's taken an axe to the back of Callisto's neck and--blip! One of her six senses is suddenly inoperable. It's as disorienting as if she had suddenly gone blind, or deaf. Which is why her next step is a flimsy crumple, and the track-suited Londo Bell operative tumbles onto the ground in a dazed heap as a very imporant part of her world goes completely silent.
(What in the--)
Only now does she recall what Arriety told her once, of a mysterious encounter, and... a void.
This void.
So yeah that's not a GREAT introduction but we play the hand we are dealt!!
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
"It TALKS?!" Yuliana exclaims, having never met a certain talking kaiju because she's always been busy eating unagi at the time. She recentres her aim, squeezes the trigger --
Tragically, that's the precise moment Myrme lunges right for the gun and takes a BIG OL' BITE out of the middle. There's a sad retort of gunpowder protesting which proves that the sidepiece has been rendered instantly useless. "You -- wait, her?!" Yuliana yelps, a target drawn on Arriety before she can say anything.
Yuliana Dispersal was having a GREAT day, and now a couple of NEWTYPES come to ruin it?! Typical, she thinks to herself. Typical!
She discards the useless remains of her gun -- snacks for Myrme! -- and turns to the woman who just crumpled as soon as she got into grasping distance. "You..." She starts, just as displeased, before she fits a smile onto her face with screws.
"My, my, my. It seems we've had a terrible misunderstanding. Here, let me help you," Yuliana says, and -- she's asking, but she isn't asking, as she crouches down to pick (to haul) Callisto upwards. "Did you slip in the puddles? Running in this weather is so treacherous." That she finds Arriety's ember-glowing eyes in the darkness as she does what she's doing -- that she holds Callisto in that horrible nothingness under the guise of helping her -- is surely a coincidence, and not a threat.
It's a threat. Callisto can no doubt feel it in her grip -- the sort of thing which could transition to something worse, just as trained soldiers can do.
Of course, Yuliana doesn't have her gun any more, even if she can't be disarmed of her horrific aura so easily. But she's taking advantage of the hand she's been dealt, too. What are the odds that all of Arriety's friends are also dangerous soldiers?
(Pretty good, Yuliana. The odds are actually pretty good.)
<Pose Tracker> Arriety Hearn has posed.
The first time she encountered Yuliana's void, Arriety was... definitely ill -- not unlike Callisto, it was as if one of the senses she'd come to depend upon was forcibly ripped out from her.
But it didn't render her nonfunctional, for one particularly important reason:
Arriety found dark comfort in it. As if one of her darkest wishes -- for her psychic senses to go silent forever -- had just been fulfilled. An extremely guilty, seductive wish -- but a wish nonetheless.
Since then, though...
Arriety's made progress in fixing her heart.
It turns out that fixing her heart meant not turning away from the entire world and shutting the rest of her senses away from it. To see, smell, taste, touch and hear... that's one of the lessons so many people taught her, including the Kakapos, including Ruri and Miss Howmei and the girls, and Roux in her training and even Akane in the way their interactions have made her realise how fragile her heart is.
It's not to say she's immune -- far from it -- but it does help... arm her with additional ways to circumnavigate around the world, in more than one sense, metaphor and not.
Her eyes widen further as Myrme actually takes a bite out of her gun and makes this gushing face like she just bit on the finest of ganache truffles. "Oomphhff... ooh, shoooo good..."
Arriety hesitates, though, as Yuliana approaches near and helps Callisto up -- she suddenly realises too late, because she isn't a trained soldier like Callie and doesn't know the plans people concoct because she doesn't have life experience in foiling those plans.
"L-let go of her!" Arriety shouts impulsively, still feeling the numb, throbbing feeling at the back of her head. "What were you doing to that woman!?"
Her voice somewhat betrays her worry, especially because she knows the more simple physical truths: she's a seventeen year old with no combat training and Yuliana is more than several times her superior in an on-foot confrontation.
<Pose Tracker> Puru Two has posed.
The world is reorienting itself to make sense with the loss of Callisto's most vital sense. Her eyes swim within her skull, aimlessly, and her every limb feels heavier than lead as the shock ripples through her nervous system. A cold wave of numbness, like the mind and body rebooting.
Please wait: now loading synapses.wad.
"Guh." she mumbles through a tongue that feels thick. Yuliana hauls her upwards--she's not a heavy girl, to be sure. The taunt reaches her ears, and it registers as such. It just takes a moment to filter through, as colour returns to her vision. The girl with the orange hair grimaces. "Weather's not the most treacherous thing out here... what the hell's your deal?" her question is aimed almost as much at the world around her as it is at one Yuliana Dispersal.
Callisto makes eye contact with Arriety. She doesn't look... unconscious, or anything, despite tripping ass over teakettle just moments ago. Just frustrated that she went down in the one moment when the only Actual Military combatant between them was really needed.
"Yeah, what was going on back there? What are you, some kinda mugger?"
That's not really very diplomatic, but then, she's not a very diplomatic girl.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
It's a shame, as far as Yuliana is concerned, that Arriety wouldn't welcome her silence. She finds those Newtypes who at least accept her order... more tolerable, than the rest.
(Don't ask how she came to that conclusion, though; her mind glances right off the inconsistency.)
To give Yuliana the barest shred of credit -- like, the kind of credit which deli workers would throw you out over if you asked them to slice the credit that thin -- she doesn't drop Callisto back into a puddle when she continues to be, well, a puddle. This may have everything to do with the way Arriety tells her to do so rather than any innate kindness in Yuliana's heart. No, it definitely does, because she looks to Arriety, and invites her: "Why don't you come take her off my hands, dear?" Come into Yuliana's horrible silence field, that is.
But Callisto says the weather isn't the most treacherous thing out here, and Yuliana, who is only human, can't help but laugh a little. It's definitely unsettling. "Hahahaha... is that what you think?" She asks, teeth flashing in her grin.
As for what was going on with the woman... "That was a personal matter," Yuliana says, with all the chiding tone of reprimanding someone who's pried into her bedroom. "An honest disagreement between folk! I'll thank you not to rampage through my life looking for reasons I'm some -- mugger, was it?" She asides, raising her brow, imperious, to Callisto. "If this is about trying to shoot your... pet..." Yuliana trails off as she looks to Arriety, with distaste, as she tries to figure out how to categorise a very heavy, very weird bug, "I'll have you know that self-defence laws clearly cover unprovoked assaults in the dead of night."
Yuliana says all of these wrong things with complete confidence, as if they're the plain and obvious truth. She is -- very, very practiced at editing reality in real time.
(Of course, if Arriety is brave enough to come support Callisto's weight instead, Yuliana will actually hand her over. Whether she'll step away is another question entirely. She's a horrible void woman!)
<Pose Tracker> Arriety Hearn has posed.
Arriety winces further as she watches her sister dearest struggle through her own senses -- in this field, she can't exactly sense her psychically... but she understands she doesn't have to -- she's lived with her for so long now that she can already tell the distress she's going through.
Callisto's asking what her deal is... and what's going on back there -- and Yuliana offers to take her off her hands.
If Arriety were a trained professional used to combat and hostage situations, she'd know the playbook here -- but she isn't, so she quietly steps forward, closer, closer...
The void is even more and more intense as she comes closer, and there is a moment in which she does falter -- but that glow in her eyes just intensifies further and further, as if symbolic of... not 'resistance', perhaps, but the way in which she navigates around the world in this metaphorical darkness of the mind.
Myrme isn't being useful, because she suddenly stopped paying attention because there's delicious crumbs of handgun to go monch, so she doesn't have any more options here: she comes close enough to support Callisto's weight, and sustain her sister in the midst of Yuliana's sphere of influence.
"Kinda sounded like... that woman didn't appreciate your disagreement either," Arriety mumbles. She looks towards her, eyes gleaming in the dark. "But it's not like I can stop you right now either. All I want is my sister back, right now."
She pauses, as she dares to venture forward boldly: "I'll even say I never saw you, if you let us go. Deal?"
<Pose Tracker> Puru Two has posed.
Callisto (and by extension, Puru Two) is wise enough to know when to pick a fight, and when to play it cool. And by 'play it cool' I mean 'do not pick a fight'. Being stripped of a very vital, some might say fundamental way of perceiving the world is one such time.
God, the proximity to the yawning -nothingness- is the worst part. Maybe if she was still further away, Callisto could acclimatise in some way. But drinking from the firehose is a bit much on her first rodeo against something that can block her sixth sense! It's all she can do to stay in the conversation, finding herself more and less lucid in bursts.
"Hell of a disagreement..." Callisto mutters, teeth clenched. As much to keep herself on her feet as anything else. Clench harder -- yes, make the gums hurt. Pain is pretty handy, it still feels the same as it did before! There's an anchor to steady yourself on. Maybe the two of them have bought enough time by now anyway? Maybe?
"We're just two good samaritans out walking our ... bug..." she posits a very ... well, I mean, I guess you can't really find fault with that statement. There are two girls and a bug.
Her gaze soon travels back to Arriety's. She focuses on those eyes, nay, that luminiscence. A beacon in the dark. The girl's frazzled brain is re-tying connections despite all that missing data. The pulse from Arriety's eyes, she links it to the feeling she always -associates- with her sister, now that's two data points to stand on... sort of...
"... be real good if you could hand me over to my sister, because apparently, I'm real allergic to you."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Yuliana watches Arriety creep forward, expectant. Can such a wretched girl, she wonders, really impress her..?
Arriety gets close enough to reach out, and supposes Baroquel didn't appreciate her; Yuliana's smile grows wider, and she declines to reply.
"Oh, you make this sound like such a cloak-and-dagger situation," she purrs, instead, with lowered tones and a lidded gaze. "It's nothing so sinister...!"
(It's definitely sinister.)
"But if you need to imagine this as an exchange," she allows for Arriety's concerns, framing them effortlessly as foundless in the process, "I'll be so kind as to hold you both... to it." Her voice trails, to leave one more implicit threat -- physical proximity -- before she reveals her sentence is so much more innocuous. (It isn't.)
And there's something about the finality of her voice which suggests that as much as she's doing them a favour -- it's one they'd be unwise to renege from.
She does, at least, shift Callisto's weight from close to her to away, handing her over to Arriety -- and even steadying her until this girl who clearly isn't a soldier can figure out her grip. Isn't she so nice?
(She definitely isn't.)
The tragedy is that all Callisto has, beside Yuliana, is the memory of that psychic connection with her sister. The wound Yuliana tears into the world is one which defies all connection; she is Minovsky's Woman, disrupting all attempts to communicate. It is an almost dimensional sort of horror, this absolute silence.
Yuliana laughs, as she steps away, just out of arm's reach. Close enough to keep them unsettled at the precipice of her aura; far enough to be able to argue she's abiding by the rules of their engagement. And then -- then -- it becomes possible to reach those empathic connections again, though there's still that unsettling feeling of being about to fall off the edge into nonexistence.
"Allergic...? What a strange thing to say. Being allergic to another person is impossible," Yuliana assures Callisto, smiling. With feigned concern, she asks: "Are you sure you're feeling okay..? Maybe you hit your head... would you like me to call you an ambulance, dear?"
<Pose Tracker> Arriety Hearn has posed.
There was an Arriety that would have just shut down to the void. No, actually, that's an outright lie -- there still is an Arriety that just shuts down to the void; it's the same Arriety that finds it as seductive and appealing as the golden double-doors she sees in her most extreme moments, when...
... the seed shatters...
... and momentary pulse of absolute clarity of her own relation to the world is achieved ...
... the Arriety that's part of that entire messy package.
So she does get why Callisto is having so much trouble right now, and why she needs her to act right now -- her fight or flight response is fully online at the moment, and...
In the darkness, within the glow of her eyes, both Callisto and Yuliana can see that her pupils shrink until it's little more than a dot in the centre of her eyes. It doesn't, visibly, make her stronger, or give her a mysterious power, or anything like that; she's still visibly encumbered with just carrying her sister. This girl is weird, but her weird doesn't help her win a physical fight.
"... yeah," Arriety answers, voice just a bit more dull and firm, even as Yuliana's lower tone washes against her. "Just two girls walking our bug. Never saw anyone. Didn't do anything."
She shifts further, and begins to inch away, one step at a time... one step at a time... that sensation begins to soften and unravel, becoming less of an iron grip and more of a loose hold. And then -- the empathic connections are back, and it's actually kind of a spike to the back of Arriety's head for a moment she tries to not show.
Because in a way, she's not unfamiliar with relating to the rest of the world by attempting to become a void.
Yuliana offers an ambulance, and Arriety defers that to Callisto. "Up to you, sis. I'll walk you if you don't want it."
think Pity Yuliana, for she can only see the physical form of Arriety. And expects nothing of her! If only she could see her as Callisto has, as Callisto does. To see the shy and scared girl standing so tall and brave is heartwarming. It's just that now is not the time for heartwarming, so the sentiment nestles in the back of Callie's mind to be dug up later, once she has decompressed.%R%RThe flame-haired girl stumbles at first, once her weight is no longer being held by the alien-seeming lady with the accent, but she finds herself before Arriety will have to carry her or otherwise act as some kind of support. As the two gain distance from Yuliana, slight as it is...%R%R... it's as if the rays of the sun are peeking through the briny depths. Swim upwards, little minnow, the darkness is not so vast and infinite as it once seemed.%R%R"Ambulance? No thanks. Didn't shell out for traveler's insurance on this one." she quips, astounded at how easy the words come out now. As soon as that connection to the rest of the living world is established, it's like--hey! You -did- learn how to walk on two feet, remember? Wake up, stupid! %R%RCallisto's eyes meet Arriety's again. She slips her arm around the other girl's shoulder, but it isn't to lean on her. It's to steady herself, sure, but as she looks at the dull windows into her sister's soul, it's obvious! %R%RIt's to support her, in the same breath. One does not carry the other, no, the two make a cohesive whole. Simple family stuff. Team stuff. %R%RPsychic stuff.%R%RCallisto lifts her head and looks back at Yuliana. Seriously, it feels like her brain is processing at 22x speed after being stuck in the morass of this toxic woman's gravity well. "And who'd I have the pleasure of bumping into? Kind strangers oughta be remembered, you know?" %R%RNobody's fooled, but that's the point! It's a you-disgust-me-and-I'll-remember-you kind of thing!
Pity Yuliana, for she can only see the physical form of Arriety. And expects nothing of her! If only she could see her as Callisto has, as Callisto does. To see the shy and scared girl standing so tall and brave is heartwarming. It's just that now is not the time for heartwarming, so the sentiment nestles in the back of Callie's mind to be dug up later, once she has decompressed.
The flame-haired girl stumbles at first, once her weight is no longer being held by the alien-seeming lady with the accent, but she finds herself before Arriety will have to carry her or otherwise act as some kind of support. As the two gain distance from Yuliana, slight as it is...
... it's as if the rays of the sun are peeking through the briny depths. Swim upwards, little minnow, the darkness is not so vast and infinite as it once seemed.
"Ambulance? No thanks. Didn't shell out for traveler's insurance on this one." she quips, astounded at how easy the words come out now. As soon as that connection to the rest of the living world is established, it's like--hey! You -did- learn how to walk on two feet, remember? Wake up, stupid!
Callisto's eyes meet Arriety's again. She slips her arm around the other girl's shoulder, but it isn't to lean on her. It's to steady herself, sure, but as she looks at the dull windows into her sister's soul, it's obvious!
It's to support her, in the same breath. One does not carry the other, no, the two make a cohesive whole. Simple family stuff. Team stuff.
Psychic stuff.
Callisto lifts her head and looks back at Yuliana. Seriously, it feels like her brain is processing at 22x speed after being stuck in the morass of this toxic woman's gravity well. "And who'd I have the pleasure of bumping into? Kind strangers oughta be remembered, you know?"
Nobody's fooled, but that's the point! It's a you-disgust-me-and-I'll-remember-you kind of thing!
<Pose Tracker> Puru Two has posed.
Pity Yuliana, for she can only see the physical form of Arriety. And expects nothing of her! If only she could see her as Callisto has, as Callisto does. To see the shy and scared girl standing so tall and brave is heartwarming. It's just that now is not the time for heartwarming, so the sentiment nestles in the back of Callie's mind to be dug up later, once she has decompressed.
The flame-haired girl stumbles at first, once her weight is no longer being held by the alien-seeming lady with the accent, but she finds herself before Arriety will have to carry her or otherwise act as some kind of support. As the two gain distance from Yuliana, slight as it is...
... it's as if the rays of the sun are peeking through the briny depths. Swim upwards, little minnow, the darkness is not so vast and infinite as it once seemed.
"Ambulance? No thanks. Didn't shell out for traveler's insurance on this one." she quips, astounded at how easy the words come out now. As soon as that connection to the rest of the living world is established, it's like--hey! You -did- learn how to walk on two feet, remember? Wake up, stupid!
Callisto's eyes meet Arriety's again. She slips her arm around the other girl's shoulder, but it isn't to lean on her. It's to steady herself, sure, but as she looks at the dull windows into her sister's soul, it's obvious!
It's to support her, in the same breath. One does not carry the other, no, the two make a cohesive whole. Simple family stuff. Team stuff.
Psychic stuff.
Callisto lifts her head and looks back at Yuliana. Seriously, it feels like her brain is processing at 22x speed after being stuck in the morass of this toxic woman's gravity well. "And who'd I have the pleasure of bumping into? Kind strangers oughta be remembered, you know?"
Nobody's fooled, but that's the point! It's a you-disgust-me-and-I'll-remember-you kind of thing!
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
And what is a door -- but a gate to a home?
Yuliana is a collection of loosely-associated parts, held together in delicate concordance; but she'd never be caught being so messy, in the face of the enemy. She sees the glow of Arriety's eyes, certainly...
But Yuliana is past being afraid of supernatural things.
"Nothing at all," she purrs, in delighted assent, as Arriety answers her with such a dull voice.
She lets Arriety edge away; she doesn't even close the space between them again. Why, she's such a considerate woman. So... thoughtful.
What a shame Callisto sees that kindness for what it is. "Oh?" She asks, on the matter of her traveller's insurance. "What a dangerous way to travel... you must be very confident."
She watches the way Callisto and Arriety so easily and naturally support each other, with all the warmth of a family, and her lip curls just so -- an appalled and aggrieved edge to her smile. A family of Newtypes...
... disgusting, she thinks.
Her smile is innocuous again, though, when Callisto looks back to her. She slicks her wet bangs back into place over her face, absently. "Mm?" She asks, eyelids lowering over her gaze. "Why, my name is Yuliana Dispersal," she gives her, for free -- because there's little point arguing for her anonymity when the girl already knows who she is. Speaking of whom, Yuliana turns her gaze over, to address: "And who is this mysterious sister of yours, Arriety..?"
As if they're friends who've cleared up a misunderstanding.
<Pose Tracker> Arriety Hearn has posed.
There was a time in which Arriety would've said that this is 'repaying Callie for all she's done for her'. Which isn't... untrue, but the Arriety currently standing as tall as she can, with as much power she can muster to her lower hips and back to keep her standing, isn't thinking in transactional terms like that. An Arriety that understands that love doesn't have to be conditional.
She flits to her gaze, still with her shrunken pupils, as the quip comes out. She can hear the life coming back to her, and feels the weight start to get easier as she steadies herself. Arriety sneaks away from her gently, and stands a bit taller, her breath... surprisingly regulated, for how fast her heart is beating at the moment.
At this point in time, in her state of elevation, seeing back into the void from the distance she's been afforded by Yuliana, perhaps... she finally sees just how colourful her world has become. She always related to emotions as colours from childhood; but somehow, these colours seem more meaningful than before. More vivid. Saturated.
Her attention is on Yuliana again as she introduces herself -- something she didn't quite expect -- and also as she's asked a question. "... sorry ... but I'm going to leave that one up to her to answer. But she's someone very important to me. Someone I'd defend with my life and more."
Myrme rolls over on her back after finishing the last crumb of handgun and a soft 'borf' escapes her mouth.
<Pose Tracker> Puru Two has posed.
Yuliana Dispersal. . .
A name she'll not forget soon. Not when it's synonymous with that lurching, ripping, awful silence.
Callisto's grip on Arriety allows her to at least lift with her arm. The two of them have enough distance on this vile, strange woman to probably be able to snag Myrme and run if things were to go south again. But that's not how things will likely go, so that is fine.
"Callisto." she answers, without a moment's hesitation. It's not just a fake name, after all, it's more. It's an attempt at a new life. It's a shot at personhood. At validation. All kinds of things. Names are important, you know! "My name's Callisto." let it sink in for a moment. Savor it.
... but there's -more- to her than new beginnings, found family, acceptance, and all those good things. Yes, those are all well and good, but you know what? There's a whole other half to this tale which keeps getting kicked down the road. And she told Arriety enough already to know that hiding from it is dumb, so, that is why she chews on this thought for a moment and then adds:
"But you'll have more luck if you try to find information on someone called Puru Two."
The parting thought is like a lit cigarette flicked into the darkness. Interesting hints and tidbits burning cherry-red. I don't know where this imagery is going, we're not actually noire.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
"And more, mm..?" The gaze which Yuliana casts over Arriety, in that moment, can only be described as hungry. "How... delightful." A breath later, it's gone, as if the expression never was. "... I'm sure she's lucky to have such a dutiful little sestrichka as yourself."
(It's a term of endearment for one's sister -- and a diminutive generally only seen in books rather than day-to-day life. Both the language and its context are incisive comments; Yuliana is disinclined to offer notes on either one.)
But Callisto answers Yuliana, and Yuliana -- who wasn't always Dispersal, dissociated from her family roots, standing alone -- smirks, for another brief moment. She declines to share her own experiences with changed names. Instead: "I'll be sure to remember that," she promises; she threatens.
"Be well," she calls to them, without sincerity, as she steps back. "And do be careful in this rain, would you? I'd hate for you to slip in the puddles again." She would not hate that.
The final look she gives to Myrme, as she turns, is annoyed -- because Yuliana is going to have to explain where her sidearm went, when she returns to base. It's another brief flash of something aside from her geniality... but there's no threat behind it, as she strolls back along the bridge.
She doesn't bother picking up her umbrella.