2022-12-14: Brera - Rescuer's Emotion
- Log: 2022-12-14: Brera - Rescuer's Emotion
- Cast: Emilia Eschonbach, Ranka Lee, Suberoa Zinnerman, Brera Sterne
- Where: Near 'The Tower' Orbital Elevator
- OOC - IC Date: 26 November 0096
- Summary: Rescue comes for Ranka and Emilia. Separately.
<Pose Tracker> Emilia Eschonbach has posed.
It's been a few hours since the rain started, and it's only getting worse. The prefab's broken roof has crumbled a little more, and the rain has been soaking into the arm of Emilia's pilot suit. It's cold and her arm is shaking- indeeed, she's shivering despite herself. She's only had half of her half of CalorieMark- she's keeping the full bar in case Ranka needs it. She reaches up with her soaking arm- her pilot suit is relatively thin given how hot a KMF can get- and pulls her hood forward again. Her supply bag, now only holding the ration bar and a pistol, sits on her lap.
One arm remains wrapped tightly around Ranka, the blanket covering her fully so that Emmy can keep her out of the rain. She's kept her phone off- not that there's much signal here- and her distress beacon on quick, limited pulses. She can feel the bracelet Sousuke gave her sitting around her wrist, and her mother's locket around her neck. Reminders. Reminders that people want her to come back.
She was sure they'd have been found by now... What could be keeping Kallen and the rest? Emmy had had to eject earlier than most, but...
She takes her eyes off the small perimeter, and looks down at Ranka. "A-are you still a--wake?" She whispers, so as not to disturb her if she isn't. Ranka should never have been in this mess... And she was in more danger due to the attacks... but would she still be here at all if they hadn't?
<Pose Tracker> Ranka Lee has posed.
Ranka is sodden and miserable from the weather, the blanket keeps out much of the rain, but not all of it. Still she hasn't complained once about the state she's in.
She's alive.
It wasn't long before that she thought she wouldn't be. She thought she was dead when things started blowing up and Asciel threatened to kill everyone.
Her pink dress is a damp mess, her hair drooping from the war against keeping it dry, perpetually matting it so it clings against her, never quite dry. She's drowsed off several times to the sound of heavy rain.
She's also awakened several times, it's so difficult to get comfortable, but she's exhausted - and the war between discomfort and exhaustion? Exhaustion so often wins.
"... Kind of..."
Ranka murmurs back to Emilia, shifting to snug up in the blanket before looking at Emilia, the part of the blanket she was sharing was no longer over her Emilia's shoulders, but fully around her. Noting the shivering.
"... Emilia." Ranka shifts even closer in Emilia's grip, then pulls up the blanket from underneath her, adjusting it then putting it back over Emilia's shoulders so they're sharing again, "You'll make yourself sick."
She then lays her head back against her shoulder as if settling into a position where it would be difficult for Emilia to do that again.
"...Think it'll be long before they come?" She asks quietly, her voice nearly drowned out by the rain.
<Pose Tracker> Suberoa Zinnerman has posed.
Kwani reported the disappearance of a number of the Garencieres surveillance targets from their usual haunts in Ashford not long before the Black Knights struck the Orbital Elevator. It wasn't difficult to discern where they had gone.
The problem now is that despite the lack of actual casualties, none of the people they're keeping an eye on have resurfaced - or have vanished on entirely unrelated matters.
So it falls to the Garencieres Team to abandon their cover of a legitimate shipping enterprise for some time, in order to properly case likely crash sites for escape pods launched during the attack. Gilboa Sant and Alec are taking point in their Geara Zulus, scouting on land, while the freighter follows at some distance.
"... Contact," Alec announces, moving his mobile suit further towards a furrow carved into the earth - a KMF escape pod, abandoned in the mud. "Jettisoned cockpit pod. Tracks are gonna be tricky to find in this weather. I'll mark it so you can pick out possible shelters, command."
"Understood, Alec," Flaste Schole replies from his seat in the Garencieres bridge. "You'll probably want to head into the woods; she'll most likely have taken refuge there." Behind him, Suberoa Zinnerman watches the grey sky, expression stern.
<Pose Tracker> Brera Sterne has posed.
Brera sees red.
It hurts. How can words hurt? How can receiving news hurt? But they do and it does, inexplicably, undeniably, like something inside is threatening to unravel and tear. What's left of his veins burn. This cyborg is more mechanics than flesh, but every piece of the machine is driven now by a volatile experience that engulfs him entirely. He does not have a name for it. He does not have a name for its potency, or its urgency, or how he knows it and feels it down to his every atom, wholly and unrelentingly.
Ranka Ranka Ranka Ranka Ranka Ranka Ranka Ranka Ranka
No one else matters. Nothing else matters.
Lucifer races through the skies, the VF in its Flight form to rip through the rain at its greatest speed. It's only once he's in the vicinity that it folds out into GERWALK, its feet not quite touching the ground, light and pivoting in the air like a dancer. He immediately begins firing on every hostile target (spoiler: everyone is hostile) in his determined, single-minded goal of finding Ranka. The escape pods... The escape pods. It hurts, why does it hurt?!
"RANKA!" he calls out, voice projected beyond the Lucifer, constantly running all manner of scans and searches for any sign or signal of her.
where where where where?!
<Pose Tracker> Emilia Eschonbach has posed.
"I-I'll be okay." Emmy says, but she doesn't push back against the blanket being placed on her. She's no less exhausted than Ranka, but the knowledge that she needs to keep going to make sure the other girl gets home safe... That will keep her going far longer than she could alone.
Emmy pauses. She told herself no lies. "...I don't... know. I th-though they'd. B-b-be here by now." Thye can't have gotten captured, can they... That KMF she was fighting, that was the Viceroy's. She's taken out whole cells of other groups... And she's the *second princess*. Next in line for the throne. Emmy's not sure how either of them are alive, now the adrenalines gone.
And then the Lucifer flies overhead, red, terrifying and screaming Ranka's name and Emmy's eyes go wide. She grabs the pistol from the bag, and removes the safety. "Ranka... s-s-stick close to me." She's trying to be brave, but she's scared as hell as she moves to stand, hoping Ranka will take her hand to help her stand. "We d-d-d-don't know if... h-he's friendly..."
The gloved hand she extends Ranka is the one that has been freezing in the rain. It's shaking and cold, even with the glove. And altogether, it's enough movement to trigger a motion sensor- and these walls are thin.
<Pose Tracker> Ranka Lee has posed.
Ranka knows about Emilia's heritage, but not perhaps all the implications thereof. The One Year War was so distant from the Frontier Colony, and she was an infant.
The idea that groups might be tracking her? Doesn't even cross her mind.
"You're shaking." Ranka notes, to Emilia saying she'll be okay, with a sort of stubborn persistence, before nodding at the idea that she thought they'd be here by now, her brow knitting in worry. "I'm sure they're just held up."
She feels something coming. Just the sheer amount of panic, and pain turns her head. Looking out into the rain with wonder.
The sound of gunfire causes her to huddle closer to Emilia, until she hears a voice projected from the VF. "Brera?" Ranka looks Emilia's way, then rises up as Emilia helps her out, and Ranka gives Emilia this questioning look at the pistol, "Emilia what are you talking about? It's Brera!"
She smiles at her happily, as she clings to her arm, "He's definitely here to rescue us! Everything's going to be okay now!" She knows without a doubt, that she'd be dead if not for him that day at Sheryl's concert. "Is there any way we can signal him to pick us up?"
<Pose Tracker> Suberoa Zinnerman has posed.
"Captain." Flaste looks up at Zinnerman. "Unidentified craft approaching, fast. Profile suggests a high-spec VF, IFF is blank."
"Well, that complicates things," the gruff captain remarks. "Gilboa, Alec, stay sharp, possible bogey inbound."
Gunfire drowns out the rain. "Bogey actual!" Gilboa barks, his personal Geara Zulu leaping off the dirt. "Orders, Captain?"
Zinnerman is about to order them to shoot the VF down when Brera screams into his machine's loudspeakers. While the freighter is far enough back to not pick it up, the Captain pinches his brow, wincing. "... He's in distress. Gilboa, try to establish a laser link, but don't let him shoot you down. Pull him away from the woods. Alec, continue the search - it's a hunch, but we might be here for the same reason."
The Geara Zulu's monoeye swivels to focus on the Lucifer as Gilboa maneuvers it away from Brera's fusillade - it's nowhere near as agile as the VF, but Gilboa's able to make his custom suit dance in its own right, though he refrains from drawing the beam chaingun mounted over the mobile suit's back.
As soon as he hears the ping of a laser link, Zinnerman addresses Brera. "Unknown VF, this is the unarmed freighter Garencieres, attempting to respond to a distress signal. Identify yourself and state your intentions."
Alec, following his orders and plunging into the wooded area, spots the prefab in the distance, and the movement through its broken walls and roof. "I think I have eyes on the target."
"Hold on signal, Alec," Zinnerman orders, waiting.
<Pose Tracker> Brera Sterne has posed.
Motion. Heat signatures. Brera's eyes widen, his cybernetics turn, his pupils become pinpoint. A signal would only cement it.
Brera does not identify himself, and does not state his intentions.
Lucifer flies low and Brera leaps out of the moving cockpick, slamming into the earth with such force that the average person with regular bones should break one or both of their legs, if not a few other bones besides. Brera hits the ground running. Lucifer moves without him, drawing any potential fire and hostiles away -- or nonhostiles, as it were. Brera is the hostile.
His connection with this VF is not so precise it could fight back, but it can circle around any fire away from their ground location until he can re-evaluate a swoop in for a pick up.
Ranka. Ranka Ranka Ranka. He sees her even at his speed, surveying, scanning, evaluating. She's wet, miserable, cold. Scared. In someone else's grip. There's a pistol. The burning under his skin shows up in none of his diagonistics. Why does it hurt?
Brera is here to wait for no one's signal, blades extending from his arms as he launches himself for the prefab, one of those blades poised for Emilia with no other announcement for frenzy and rage.
<Pose Tracker> Emilia Eschonbach has posed.
"R-right..." Emmy is going to have to count on Ranka's encouragement. Beside, Kallen's strong... and Cascade was doing really well, and Rin had her set up and Professor Martel's smart. And Zero wouldn't abandon them, either. So. It'll be fine, right.
"Brera?" Emilia asks, confused. "Wh-who's Bre-"
Her eyes scan to another ship coming on the horizon. "Th-that's..." That's the ship Captain Zinnerman and Miss Marida were on... Why are they here? Her distress signal was meant to be coded.
"... I'm kidding. Mr. Zinnerman noticed immediately and I had no idea until I was given a little prompting. I don't know how I put my shirt on in the morning."
"N-no way..." But she's given no time to think as Brera drops in front of her and points the arm blade at her. He moved so fast- she can't keep up... Fear stars to fill Emilia. Fear and anger. She's not helpless here. She won't be helpless here. She won't. And...
She pushes Ranka behind her, putting herself between the girl and the murderous cyborg. She moves both hands to the grip of the pistol, like she was taught. But this is her first on foot combat. She pulls the trigger three times.
Two shots ring out.
<Pose Tracker> Ranka Lee has posed.
"He's-" Ranka was about to answer, when Emilia spots the ship on the horizon. And Ranka follows her gaze to where her hair does a pathetic sort of, half twitch with the damp weighing it down, pressing it to her head, "-isn't that the freighter I... saw you off on?"
Ranka says in wonder, she didn't go aboard herself, she had other transportation arrangements but she at least saw the ship they were boarding...
Ranka hears the VF engines overhead - as Brera hits the ground not terribly far from them. "Brera! You came!" He's running right at her in her eyes. A flash of a blade, "Wait! Brera wait-!"
Emilia shoves Ranka to the ground, and with a yelp she hits the ground with a wet splash against the pooling water, right as Emilia makes her declaration, and two shots ring out.
Ranka covers her ears quickly, flinching against the sound of the gunshot. Her mind is in a panic now, in disbelief. How could this happen!? Both Brera and Emilia want to save her, why are they fighting?
Her ears still ringing, she hurriedly clambers to her feet, almost slipping again in the wet. as she cries out with a volume that might be unexpected from her small lungs, if one didn't know her vocal talents, "St-STOP!"
As she runs right at them - if she has her way, between them, to try to cling to either Brera's arm or Emilia's arm, whichever she comes into contact with first...
... to try and stop this, before one or both of them get hurt. "STOP! PLEASE!"
<Pose Tracker> Suberoa Zinnerman has posed.
It's all the horrible tension of a moment about to end in irrevocable bloodshed, and with Gilboa occupied keeping Brera's VF busy and the rest of the Garencieres team still aboard their freighter, there's almost no-one to stop Brera killing the hooded and masked pilot with Ranka.
Alec's orange shades glint. "Not on my watch," he growls, pushing his Geara Zulu forwards and trying to slam a massive splayed hand on top of the cyborg, not with crushing strength - but enough pressure to keep him pinned to the ground.
A mobile suit might be faster than a cyborg as heavily-modified as Brera. It is certainly not faster than bullets.
<Pose Tracker> Brera Sterne has posed.
One shot hits metal, ricocheting with a spark of light in the darkness brought on by cold rain. A second shot explodes into Brera's side.
Brera does not slow.
Emilia's gun is cleaved cleanly in two before the third shot ever fires. Brera twists, spinning his body into a kick to slam her into the wall behind her. His pursuit is relentless, other blade prepared to thrust directly through Emilia's flesh.
STOP! PLEASE!
As if frozen in time, or a computer programmed stalled, there is no motion to Brera at all. Red oozes from his gunshot wound, but far too little of it to be normal. There's punctured metal where meat should be. "...Ranka?"
Geara Zulu's hand to thrusts into the conflict and smashes him Brera the ground. Brera makes a brief, thrashing effort, like a wild animal caught under a hunter's net, but the pressure of a mobile suit is enough to immobilize him. His teeth grind together, fingers clawing into the ground with a sudden surge of new emotion demanding he get up, surging and spiraling when he can't.
He doesn't know what this one is, either.
<Pose Tracker> Emilia Eschonbach has posed.
The gap between Emilia and Brera might as well be the gulf between the Earth and Jupiter. Brera moves so quickly that she doesn't have time to react, the clang of the bullets reaching her ears, the sound of metal being slashed. By the time she starts to move she feels Brera's kick slam into her, and she lets out a cry of pain before slamming into the wall of the pre-fab, lucky to not go through it. The impact knocks her hood off, revealing a shock of lavender hair, the bob holding it in place falling away.
For a moment, she thinks she's blacking out- only for Ranka's cry to stop to pull her back. "I-I-I'm... o--kay..." Emilia lies, as she tries to stand up, only to look at the two halves of the gun on the ground. That was her only weapon and she-
Hit? Then why is he still fighting? He seems-
And then a Zeon Mobile Suit tries to pin him to the ground. Shock, horror and anger ligh in Emmy's eyes. Why have Zeon come for her now!? Now, after everything? And they just-
The Geara Zulu's hand lifts and Emilia is horrified. Why would anyone send someone like this Brera to come after Ranka? What the hell is going on!?
She slips, and slumps back against the wall. Her eyes are wide open, but she's silent. What is she... supposed to do now?
<Pose Tracker> Ranka Lee has posed.
Ranka's frantic at the moment, between the exchange of Emilia and Brera. The way the pieces of the gun drop. Brera kicks Emilia away so hard-! Ranka knows he's cyborg enhanced, enough that she's afraid he caved in her ribcage.
Ranka runs to Emilia initially, intending to get between them, as she puts a hand against Emilia, looking back Brera's way, pleading, "She's my friend! She saved me-! Please-!"
Emilia said she's okay, but she in no way believes that!
Ranka's red eyes widen at the red oozing from Brera's abdomen. A mobile suit hand comes down, and Ranka shrieks in alarm as it pins him...
The last time she saw him, he vanished from her life, and she knew without a doubt it was all her fault.
She can't even begin to comprehend where this feeling of panic and fear is coming from, it's just there. She can't lose him. She can't.
But she knows she's going to.
The girl's eyes go wide, dilating, and Emilia would see her shake, her voice barely above a whisper, "...no... please... not... not my..."
Ranka rasps, feeling something pressing against her consciousness, between the blood and the memories she can't access.
Emilia would see her get up, just long enough to take one stumbling step, after another right towards the Geara Zulu hand, her gait more like some creature of living death.
She makes it only as far as the hand, just in front of it her hand reaching for him, caught in the hunter's snare, "Bre..." And that's the moment he brain SLAMS the door on her consciousness, "...ra..."
Ranka's eyes roll back, as she hits the ground with a splash, hand still reaching for him.
<Pose Tracker> Suberoa Zinnerman has posed.
"... Captain." Alec's voice is shaking a little as he adjusts his shades. "Hostile immobilised. Miss Eschonbasch was not alone - her companion is unconscious."
Zinnerman frowns as the Garencieres comes in. "The pilot?"
"Still active, I think; heavily enhanced cyborg. Orders?"
"Let's see if he listens to reason now. Patch me through."
"Sir." The Geara Zulu gently holds Brera in place as Alec routes the communications through his mobile suit's speakers.
"This is Captain Zinnerman of the Garencieres. I recommend, young man, that you stand down so that we can render medical assistance to everyone here."
<Pose Tracker> Brera Sterne has posed.
Ranka shrieks. Brera's mind goes blank. It reaches for something it cannot find. His head throbs. The bullet in his side is nothing. It means nothing because Brera means nothing. But this is something. This is everything, threatening to devour Brera's entire mind whole.
Then she's stumbling, and Brera's struggling to reach out, his own eyes a wide mirror of her own. There is no strength and calculation of a cyborg warrior in the effort. It's no more powerful, and just as desperate, as a young boy.
Brera's not yet fully an adult. His face can still look the part.
"Ran... ka...!"
She goes down with a splash. He can't catch her. He's not there.
He wasn't there. He's never there.
The voice patches through before Brera can think to put up a new fight. Fortunate. He stood, mostly, to injure himself further in the process with the desperate, wild look in his eyes. It dies away, dimming, falling away to a blank emptiness as Brera refuses to look away from Ranka's fallen form.
"... Understood."
<Pose Tracker> Emilia Eschonbach has posed.
Emilia can barely stand- but her vision focuses on Ranka, stumbling towards Brera. The Mobile Suit- Emmy pushes herself one more time. "Ranka... d-d-don't..." She forces herself not fully to her feet, into a clumsy lunge to try and stop her falling-
But Emilia's balance fails her on the slippery, muddy, slightly bloody ground. A lunge became a stumble, becomes a full blown fall as she doesn't manage to get close to Ranka, falling side on into the mud- the side Brera just hit hard enough to bruise ribs. She whimpers in pain, as she makes one more feeble effort to reach out. Even as Zinnerman asks Brera to stand down. She looks up at the Garencieres.
It looks like she was helpless after all... To fail so soon after telling Ranka she'd keep her safe... "I'm... s-s-sorry."
<Pose Tracker> Suberoa Zinnerman has posed.
The freighter lands, discharging a middle-aged blond, who looks at the three people in various states of collapse and shutdown and sighs. "Right then. I'm Ivan, I'm the ship's medic." He walks over to Emilia to help her up. "Bring her aboard, please," he says to Brera, indicating Ranka.
"I'm sure you have a lot of questions for the Captain," he says quietly to Emilia, before leading them to the freighter.
<Pose Tracker> Brera Sterne has posed.
Brera is released, and immediately at Ranka's side. He gently lifts her up, supporting her head and staring at her fallen form. Ranka. Ranka, Ranka... Her vitals appear stable. She's uninjured, only fainted... She does not need medical attention.
But Emilia... Ranka's friend, she said. Guilt is absent. It shouldn't be. Even Brera recognizes he should feel something in this scenario for his mistake. It's blank. A void. Clawing at nothing. There's only Ranka to cling onto. Still, that means he should save her. Because Ranka would want him to.
It's too late. And he only came for Ranka.
Gingerly, Brera lifts Ranka into his arms, her held close and gently against him.
"...Connect."
Rain stops, a wind kicking up, as Lucifer sails overhead. Brera leaps away, now acutely aware of the mobile suits and other possible adversaries on the scene. He vaults from the broken walls, Ranka in hand, back into the Lucifer, and then he is gone.
<Pose Tracker> Emilia Eschonbach has posed.
As Ivan pulls her up, Emilia's exhaustion is clearly bone deep at this point. She's shivering, and her pilot suit is sopping wet. Her legs are shaky after the hit and the ensuing trip. Ivan's definitely going to have to half carry her up to the Garencieres- But it's over now, right.
Right?
The rain stops, momentarily, and her eyes scan over to Brera picking up Ranka and... leaving.
"Ra-" Her voice dies in her throat, having hit her limit long ago. She struggles briefly against the medic to make one last flail to reach her friend... Only to sag completely against the medic, enervated and exhausted.
The rain doesn't return to hide her tears, but she's got no more energy to do anything else.