2023-03-11: !the great void launcheS
- Cutscene: !the great void launcheS
- Cast: Yuliana Kafim
- Where: Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace
- Date: 2023-03-11
- Summary: Yuliana deploys in Da Xukong 0 for the first time.
Yuliana's health has finally been cleared. Of course, Elisa gave her a full work up, but in the end -- she was satisfied.
And that's why Yuliana's sitting in the cockpit, now.
It isn't the first time she's been here; falling into the cockpit is for rookies, to hear her tell it. Still, it's the first time she's engaged the craft in earnest. Da Xukong 0's first sortie. Parminder was nice enough to take their servants and their ship and bring her up to space; she'd have to modify it to get airtime in atmosphere, and Elisa... doesn't want her messing around in the guts of machines right now. It's not safe, she says, and Yuliana... well, certainly she wants her wife not to worry.
Anyway.
"Engaging," Yuliana reports, as she flicks the switch to wake Da Xukong's systems. There are several screens on its console, lined with toggles, switches, and the occasional dial. Her pilot's seat has levers by the armrests, which still give her plenty of access to the forest of clutches and levers which run to the floor. It's also curved in such a way to let those snakelike tendrils sneak out from either side of her back -- an extra set of hands for what would otherwise be too much to manage at once.
(She has a custom fit normal suit, with something like gloves, strapped to the ends of those snapping tentacle-claws. It is, of course, green and purple. She reaches around the back of her seat, and clips sensors to the leading fin of her frills, behind both of her ears.)
The foremost screen lights up... but not with any language Earth would understand. The script is elongated, warped and clustered in strange ways, all stretched inside-out and travelling the wrong way.
Yuliana, still, can read it.
Kia-ialloth'you llph'otfh'ou-llni
DA XUKONG 0
Y-yth'yollysh'y-k... OK
Ll:o sh'jsth'ianish llkh'ioll
Llkh'ioth'ia tiasth'llwkth'you
"Create destruction..." She breathes, fingers stretching out to trail down the screen, for a moment. (She is, of course, strapped in by a steel cage harness; this machine was built to keep her safe.) "All right," with a fiercer tone, she reports, to mission central: "All systems green. Da Xukong, launching!"
"Now launching," Parminder reports, as the magnets release. "Good hunting, Captain."
"Rrrryaaahhh--!!" Is Yuliana's response, as she thrusts her clutch forward. Immediately, the reason why she needs her snakes, with the claws they call jaws, is made obvious: Da Xukong is an octoped machine, arachnoid in movement, scuttling our of the launching bays with disconcerting speed. Once it leaps into the vacuum of space, the thrusters in its legs take over, as it jets in towards the ruined colony she was told about.
Parminder pulls back; he knows very well he might not even have to scrape Yuliana up after this, given the covered switch labelled 'lliath'll'yafoll' on her console. It's not his fight.
Rather, the reason Yuliana pushed to be cleared now...
"Ritechka," Yuliana growls, comms off, as Da Xukong grasps onto one destroyed hunk of colony and scuttles inside. "If you really 'exist'... I won't let you go so easily," and her grasp on those many delightful levers is tight.
"I'll grant you that much... since you never let them turn you against me. That's my reigning right--!!"
She is angry, tightly-woven, and will be no oasis nor assistance to any others come to Rita's aid.
But now, right now, she is alone, as she hides herself for the ambush. No matter how many times she has to herd Rita away from her boltholes... "You're mine," she promises, and she is the one who's chosen to try. "Even if you're kicking and screaming the whole way... I've decided!"
She's not just angry.
"I won't allow you to exist like this -- Ritechka...!"