2023-05-10: The Bigger Picture
- Cast: Michele Luio, Jona Basta
- Where: Hong Kong
- Date: U.C. 0097 05 10
- Summary: Michele updates Jona on her plans to capture the Phenex. Jona lays into her for her abuse of everyone around her.
CW: Rampant alcohol abuse, verbal abuse, threats of violence
<Pose Tracker> Michele Luio has posed.
The meeting is in Hong Kong, but it's not at Luio & Co's headquarters. Michele had never brought Jona there.
No, it was at a fancy hotel, in a private lounge that was currently 'booked'. Only three people would be there tonight.
Michele Luio, who had booked the lounge.
Jona Basta, who had been 'ordered' moreso than invited to come, to discuss their next move. Something about having located Rita.
And Brick Teclato, tending bar. (He was a decent mixologiist.)
The first and the last were already waiting for Jona - Brick behind bar, unafraid to use heavy booze...
And Michele at the bar waiting for Jona. She knew he drinked to cope.
She wasn't his therapist, so who was she to tell him how to? She already had her methods. They were possibly worse.
<Pose Tracker> Jona Basta has posed.
Jona was smoldering beneath all the alcohol. The rage, barely contained, threatened to flood forth without warning. The last few weeks had driven him to his absolute limit, and the revelation that Michele had installed the NT-D system into the Narrative without his knowledge, and then had triggered it during his most recent encounter with Rita and the Phenex...Suffice to say, he had some words for her.
Walking into the lounge, Jona gritted his teeth as he entered. As befitting Michele, the entire place was empty. Empty save for her and her damn butler. She was sitting at the bar, looking as haughtily indifferent as ever. Did she even care about what she had done to him? To Rita?
He'd screamed his vocal chords until they'd burst and overflowed with blood in that damn, possessed cockpit, and even after regenerative therapy, his voice still sounded hoarse even now. The doctors said it'd go back to normal with time...but time wouldn't heal yet another betrayal from his childhood "friend." Perhaps that's what she was always meant to be. If Rita was the bird...then she was the snake.
Sitting down at a seat two places down from Michele, Jona said nothing as Brick brought him a glass of something. It didn't matter what it was. Jona just needed an escape. Downing the glass in one go, he grunted. "What the hell do you want now, Michele?"
<Pose Tracker> Michele Luio has posed.
Michele did not bat an eye as Jona came in. She couldn't look weak. She sipped at her martini, waiting for him to sit and address her before she began. He'd have words for her, sure...
But she had to keep him focused first. The mission relied on him the most.
"The Phenex was under our nose for weeks. The Photon Power Lab had it, was harboring her. I showed up to retrieve it and it fled into space."
There's a silent, expressionless sip of the cocktail. "This is good because space is much easier to predict than Earth, whether you believe it or not. I know her next location. It's somewhere she can't escape easily."
Michele finally turns to look Jona in the eyes, that icy cold expression on her face. "This time, you'll be assisted. By who, doesn't matter. But you'll be able to nail the Phenex to the floor and bring her home. Won't you?"
Despite not signaling for it, she starts mentally bracing herself for the barrage she knows is coming.
<Pose Tracker> Jona Basta has posed.
- crack*
A hairline fracture ripples through the tumbler as Jona's enhanced strength shudders through his arm and hand. His grip clenches tightly as his teeth grit and his nostrils flare. That was it? That was all she had to say after the hell she had put him and Rita through? It took every fiber of his being not to throw the now empty, cracked glass at Michele. Instead, he set it down, his hand shaking as he did so.
"That's it? That's all you have to say after what you did to me? To Rita?" Turning to face Michele, Jona glared at her, his vision starting to go crimson at the edges. "You put that...that damn system inside the Narrative, you didn't tell me it was there, or what it would do to me, and I almost killed Rita because of it. You've nothing to say about how your decision-making killed our friend?"
A silence follows before Jona snarls and sweeps his glass off the bar with his arm, a shattering following shortly afterwards as the tumbler impacts the ground and breaks apart. Much like his body had. Much like his psyche was on the verge of doing. Then again, this was just another day for her, wasn't it? No matter how much he howled, no matter how much he raged, he was still a dog on a leash to her, a tool to track down her prize, the Phenex. Not a friend. Not a person.
"I'm sorry, I should've said your prize, right? Who am I kidding, you stopped seeing Rita and I as people a long time ago, let alone as friends or equals. Fine then, tell me where you're sending your fucking hound next. Who is helping me? Who is going on your goddamn hunt with me?" In a flash, so quick that it surprised even him, Jona was eye to eye with Michele as he snarled.
"Tell me who the fuck you're sending with me. No more goddamn surprises, you bitch."
<Pose Tracker> Michele Luio has posed.
"A miscalculation of the strength." Michele admits, to Jona. Don't tell him how you were worried about him. He won't believe you.
Brick places a new glass with new booze down, tentatively, but only if Jona wants it. Michele can afford broken glass.
"Fair enough. You'll be heading to Metis, a college colony, with Vist's special project - the Banshee. It's powerful enough to make sure we win this time. I'm not screwing up again."
Michele downs her martini, sliding the glass back tot Brick. "We *will* win this time. No mistakes. Everything's going according to plan."
She was stone-cold externally. She knew she deserved every lash she got. Keep taking them. This is your fate, Michele Luio.
"Then you'll be done. Don't worry."
<Pose Tracker> Jona Basta has posed.
Jona's eyes narrow at Michele. "A miscalculation? That's all you have to say, after I was turned into the NT-D's brain computer? That's fucking it?!"
Jona's fists ball up in rage as he tenses up and starts breathing heavily, his body instinctively clenching and unclenching as fury threatens to overtake him once more. Her uncaring gaze, and Brick's close attention to his motions just prove his subconscious thoughts without a doubt. They never cared. They never cared about you or Rita. All they want is the damnable suit, so they can have their way. At the mention of the Banshee, Jona goes taut. So now they're working with the Vists and their risen corpse? He might not have been told anything officially...but he could feel the torment. Turning back to Michele, Jona's disgust is written evident on his face.
"You're sending me against Rita and the Phenex with an abomination? You really don't care at all, do you? Otherwise even you wouldn't go as far as sitting on Martha Vist's lap like a good little girl, as the two of you send me and that risen corpse against our childhood fucking friend! They brought back someone who died, Michele. //It's wrong.//"
Without giving her a chance to respond, Jona ventures behind the bar, shoves Brick aside, and grabs the first bottle he sees. The ensign begins chugging. And chugging. And chugging some more. Enough alcohol to provide for a punch bowl's worth of cocktails is quickly drowned into Jona's system, the only way the rage will stay put, stay addled, stay smoldering instead of exploding into sudden violence.
Afterwards? He tosses the bottle over his head, the drained container of spirits barely missing Michele's head as it whizzes by.
<Pose Tracker> Michele Luio has posed.
"Would an apology actually do anything for you?" Michele asks Jona, honestly. "I don't think you'd believe me if I did."
As Jona downs a bottle and then tosses it, Michele stands up, placing both hands on the bar. If the near-death scared her, she doesn't show it. "It's the winning play. Everything has a purpose, Jona. You most of all! If you can't grasp the bigger picture now, then you will once this is done."
"As long as you pilot the Narrative one more time, we win. We'll never have to speak again. Wouldn't you like that? I know how happy it'd make you."
'You're hurting him, Michele', she thinks. 'You should have been the one to die.' "Everyone gets their happy ending."
<Pose Tracker> Jona Basta has posed.
"The bigger picture? THE BIGGER PICTURE?! Listen to yourself, spouting that 'for the greater good' bullshit. Do you know the kinds of people who say those words unironically? Dictators. Fascists. Terrorists. This is the kind of justification that the Zabis used, that Char Aznable used, that Full Fucking Frontal of the Sleeves uses. And now you too? I knew you sunk low, but I expected better out of you." Even the dangerous levels of alcohol seeping into his blood at this moment do little to dull the rage or coherency of Jona's outburst.
"The Narrative is a goddamn curse on this world. It's a coffin that should've stayed buried with the White Devil. You'd loooooooooove to have someone of Amuro Ray's caliber working for you on this. Why don't you just go get him? Apparently he's fucking back and I'm sure you'd like someone more reliable than damaged goods, wouldn't you?" Jona turns on Michele as the rage fuels his next words.
"Never speak again? Michele, I'd love nothing more than for you to feel all the goddamn pain you've dealt me and Rita at the end of a barrel by the time this is all over. You make Gihren fucking Zabi look like the most empathetic person in space compared to how little you care or react from using me or others as your disposable fucking cannon fodder. Hell, I bet he'd do a better job at running an orphanage than you! At least he'd actually interact with the kids!
A long pause follows as Jona's rage continues to boil, and then finally, slightly simmer. "One more time. I'll get into that fucking suit one more time. But if you activate the NT-D behind my back again, so help me, I'll make sure you're one of the targets even if it kills me. Go to hell, Michele."
<Pose Tracker> Michele Luio has posed.
Michele takes insults like steel. They hurt, they sting, but she knows they won't matter soon. Though the Gihren Zabi comparison does, admittedly, make her wince visibly.
"Amuro Ray couldn't accomplish the mission." Michele says, with a straight face.
As Jona threatens to kill her if she betrays him again, and tells Michele to go to hell, she respoonds to the latter with a bitter smile. "Gladly."
Witht a wave to Brick, she turns to Jona. "Well, that settles it. You're free to leave. I'll have my people contact you closer to the flight." A pause. "And of course, I have the tab handled. Don't worry about that."
<Pose Tracker> Jona Basta has posed.
Jona snarls and marches out the other door. It's not until he's out of Michele and Brick's field of vision that he begins slumping over. The alcohol was finally taking its toll. Even a Cyber Newtype can't get away with chugging an entire bottle of...oh shit. It was absinthe. Jona groaned as he sank down against the hotel wall.
Everything was spinning. Everything...was...
Somebody...please. Help.