2023-06-09: Milly Enters The Underworld
- Log: Milly Enters The Underworld
- Cast: Milly Ashford, Yuliana Kafim
- Where: Sjette Kopp Kafe, Trondheim, Scandinavia
- Date: 2023-06-09
- Summary: Milly reaches out to one of her shadiest contacts for help doing something shadier than her mean. Yuliana offers her far more help than she asked for, though, because she sees great promise in her. With an arrangement which suits the comfort of both parties, they settle on an agreement and a friendly attitude.
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
Milly buys a burner phone.
Milly realizes she can still be tracked through her credit card purchase of the phone unless she makes several changes.
Milly goes to Scandinavia to pay cash for a different burner phone outside of the Federation entirely... though also just to keep up appearances that she's having a normal wealthy young woman's gap year traveling the world and seeing things.
From a certain perspective, one would suppose she is doing that.
Yuliana receives a message from an unknown number.
> Is this still the woman whose wedding I went to?
> It's... a Britannian friend. We ran into each other outside the Samurai and Ninja Museum once?
> I don't suppose you'd be interested in meeting up in Scandinavia? I'm here on business.
> I'd like your advice on something. ... Please be discreet.
So it goes that Milly, in gaudy green sunglasses, a matching blazer, and a white pencil skirt, comes to be sitting outside a cafe in Scandinavia in the middle of summer. After a few moments' thought, she casually texts Nina something about how nice the weather is out here... from her other phone.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
This is hardly the first time Yuliana's gotten cold-called by an untraceable number. She does do her due diligence of confirming the number doesn't lead anywhere, of course; she's not an amateur.
Milly, of course, receives her reply.
> Yes, I remember you.
> I'm happy to help.
> If you'd like a discreet spot, I'd suggest Sjette Kopp Kafe, out Trondheim way.
> It's had a strong student culture for centuries, you know.
And she's right, too. Milly's far, far from the only girl her age, in this city -- and she'll find that Sixth Cup Cafe, as they'd translate it for her, is tucked in an out-of-the-way nook off any of the main streets. Because of its location, it's not the busiest place, but what's on offer is very good.
Yuliana appears in a sunhat befitting the summer, sharp-edged sunglasses shielding her eyes beneath it. A light jacket has its sleeves rolled up to elbow level, in cheerful shades of green; her slacks are a dark, neutral shade. The scarf about her neck is purple, meanwhile, just like the bracelet around her right wrist.
She buys some coffee of her own -- it's fine for her to have some caffeine, sometimes, Elisa said so -- and goes to sit down...
... not far from someone else here, as it happens.
"Ah, Milly," she smiles, slipping her glasses from her face and tucking them into a fold of her scarf. "How lovely to hear from you again. I was afraid we'd scared you off, given the terrible trouble at our wedding!"
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
> I appreciate the help!
Milly sips contentedly at her coffee as Yuliana sits down; she gives her a little time to settle in and address her. She's in no rush; she is, after all, a recent graduate spending her gap year traveling. She has nothing but time. Pulling her own sunglasses up onto her forehead, she replies calmly, "For a little while you did, but I'm a little skeptical of the official version of events around your departure from the Federation."
That's right -- the maelstrom of the era works in Yuliana's favor! At least as Milly comes to distrust what she sees on HiTV as a default posture.
"How are things with you and your wife? Everything going well?" She does actually enjoy small talk... though she recognizes that in a meeting like this it's a bit at a premium, so she only indulges in it for a few moments.
"I'm looking for a MULS-P compliant machine. I can 'lose' the kind of cockpit module I'm used to from a lot of different places, but anything more than that would trace right back to me." By way of explanation, she notes, "I don't want to show up to help a friend with nothing, and I thought if I knew anyone who could help arrange things, it'd be you."
Yuliana is... sketchy. Milly knows that. She's always known that -- but she does seem to have her head on straight in the ways that matter, and connections in a lot of places. (Surely, who would run soup kitchens as part of some nefarious scheme?)
"Do you still keep in touch with the woman we talked with at the party where we met?" she adds. Whether it's small talk or business depends a lot on how Yuliana answers.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"Oh, the Republic has a great many things to say about my character, I'm sure," Yuliana says, as if she hasn't kept a pulse on all their messaging around her and the Nega Force. "But it's always best to watch the news with a certain measure of scepticism."
She smiles, though, when Milly brings up Elisa. "We're very happy together," she says, and her affection is warm. And surely she's being figurative, as she says: "Our home is our Castle, somewhere safe and quiet. All is well." She sips her coffee, and that's lovely, too. (She has one too many teeth, there, on the right side of her face. It clips the ceramic.)
Lowering her cup back down, with a little tink, she makes a wordless thoughtful noise against her teeth. "And what cockpit module are you used to, dear?" She asks, casually stirring a little more sugar into the cup.
It's not a nefarious scheme.
"Hmm..." Yuliana's gaze lifts, to look at vines all woven into a privacy-granting lattic, as she thinks. Connect a few dots, the way she's asking for a machine, and she prompts: "Ah, Julia, was it? Yes -- yes, we meet for cards, now and then. She's a lovely woman, isn't she? And so energetic!" She titters at her own joke, fingers veiling her lips.
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
If anything, Yuliana's affection for her wife seems more measured than the last time they talked about her in much detail -- maybe married life has chilled her out a little. It's nice to see.
Milly is still ever the romantic, you know.
"I've used early-model Knightmare Frames before for school things... and I did grow up around them. I know how to do cockpit module swaps, so anything on the standard is fine. The ruggedness of a Wanzer might actually be a little better for this..." It does add a point of potential exposure for her to have to do that kind of module swap -- but she's still in and out of Ashford Academy to talk to her grandfather and assist with GUTS logistics. The window would be tight, but she could do that.
Yuliana affirms she knows Julia and still hangs out with her, which... does complicate the idea that Yuliana has committed to charity work after her departure from the REA. On the other hand, well. At this point, who is she to gainsay her for that much, given what she's asking for?
The pun gets Milly to laugh. It's a small, catlike thing -- an upturn of her lips, a faint 'hmhm~,' a hand up to her mouth. "She's definitely interesting. We have a little more in common than I thought, and... I do think this world needs to change a little bit before it goes extinct."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"Change is a good thing, when the status quo is so miserable! Oh, perhaps she's not the type of friend you'd expect me to have," and Yuliana isn't psychic, but she can intuit what knowing Julia implies, "but the truth is, one doesn't become a commanding officer in the REA without getting a little dirty. Well, I had my own issues with the infrastructural prioritisation of the Republic, so I had no issues accepting something under the table here and there to arrange a light security detail when she wanted to steal some electricity." She smiles, her fingers veiling the expression, with some measure of modesty. "I suppose we ended up getting along, given that."
That much implies, at least, that Yuliana isn't involved with BioNet; if she's telling the truth, her connection to Julia is much... more... innocuous?
(Not at all innocuous, actually, but the REA's corruption is at least a different kettle of fish.)
"Well -- if you want a rugged frame, you'll want a quad-leg design," she gets to business, though her smile doesn't fade. She turns over a napkin, and pulls a fountain pen from the inside of her jacket, with a few illustrative sketches to visually communicate the steadiness of extra limbs. (And she turns it around so Milly can see it properly, of course. Isn't she thoughtful?) "Look, here -- the typical explosive ordinance suits employ have to be borne by two joints in the typical upright design, but a quad-leg design is able to distribute force much more effectively. It takes much more to knock a spider down than a bipedal machine."
Yuliana can be a bit of a snake herself, but now, at least, she's entirely focused on the engineering problem. Milly surely knows enough engineers to see how 'solving a problem' is blatantly a meat pumpkin for the grand majority of them. "If you're integrating a Knightmare cockpit, you'll want something with good electronic support to integrate easily with the autobalancing -- my first thought's a Desmatz, really. I've driven them before, they're solid. You can get out of a situation even if you're down a leg, in one of those." She steals another napkin, makes some more visualised notes, and passes that over. "You'd just want to do a bypass on the leg parts central connection to hook into the Knightmare automation and reprogram the autobalancing. Don't miss the lower centre of gravity. The cockpit's going to assume a certain level of elevation while it's compensating -- a hack job will have you faceplanting before you set anything on fire." She has had some retrofits in her day. There's a lot you need to think about, shifting control schemes!
"Anyway," she shakes her head, "I can get you a Knightmare cockpit and a wanzer to fit it in -- it's safer if you don't procure materials yourself. Don't worry," she adds, with a grin which shows off one too many teeth, "this wouldn't even be the first thing I've appropriated from Britannia, since my unjust exile." The last thing they stole was an entire Salamis Kai -- though, being fair, Yuliana did have Elisa's help with that one.
And Elisa's help does tend to make a great many things unfair, for whoever's unlucky enough to oppose them.
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
Milly raises an eyebrow at that -- but she knows the political situation in the REA is one where a certain amount of dirty dealing happens no matter what. As far as reasons to deal dirty, that one's pretty prosocial. Sometimes she feels like the more she knows about Yuliana, the less obvious her motives are...
... but then, she can hardly fault someone for being inscrutable.
Milly gets walked through the practicals of a side of things she's only ever known from seeing old design schematics her family owns and occasionally dealing with club events. This part is a free education, and Milly respects it for what it is, scooting forward and taking a peek. "Hmmm, that's not Britannian standard, but that's actually probably a good thing for me right now," Milly realizes. If her machine seems to be a kludge of inconsistent technological choices, she looks more like an insurgent of non-Britannian origin, which makes her in turn a little safer.
When it gets really technical, Milly pulls out her phone and starts taking down notes. When Yuliana offers to just get her stuff, though, she can't help but raise an eyebrow. "Are there strings attached to this kind of extra assistance? I knew I'd be able to count on you to at least point me in the right direction, but this seems like a lot more than I initially asked for."
She realizes that might sound rude, though, so she appends, "I don't mind returning the favor. I just want to know what this is going to cost." It's not money that Milly assumes will be the price, either -- Yuliana doesn't seem like the sort of person to concern herself too much with that.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Just wait until Milly learns about the orphan-helping charity Yuliana helped to operate in their borders. Orphans! Literal orphans!
Whether she deliberately arranged her list of bribes to be more morally acceptable than officially acceptable, or whether she actually believed in getting past all the red tape to get help to people... well, a little from column A, a little from column B, as they say.
It is true that there are worse bribes she could have taken, anyway.
"An excellent question," Yuliana smiles, though, when Milly enquires as to the cost. It sounds like praise, because it is praise; she doesn't seem offended, to hear it. "I could tell you that I think it's a damn shame Britannia produced a promising young lady like yourself, so I consider giving you options outside your country's mores to be a moral victory. And it would even be true! Why, I could even advance that I think we could be friends. But if I were you, I wouldn't just accept logic like that," she adds, with a little waggle of her pen, between her fingers.
"So, you are a wealthy scion of Britannia, unfortunately," Yuliana sighs. "A young Ashford like yourself will hear a great many things from all those appointments you can't wriggle out of. So let's consider us squared away if you're happy to tell me if you happen to hear any of them chattering about my wife's dealings or mine, mm? Of course," she adds, raising a single finger from the pen, "I won't oblige you to do anything that would put yourself in danger. My words aren't empty enough that I'd lie to your face about something like this -- I do quite like you, you know. I'd like to see you succeed." She tosses her pen up, and catches it, in a hand. "But I understand if you don't trust me. I was in a position where my occupation made me rather impossible to trust, for close to a decade. So," she smiles, and lays her pen down, spreading her hand out towards Milly instead, "does something like this make sense, to you?"
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
"... I'm starting to feel that way, too," Milly mentions, at the idea that it's something of a shame that Britannia produced a woman like herself. On reflex, she tilts her body a little to the side to allow an old wound a little more comfort, now that her attention's been drawn that way.
"I do still have marriage interviews and business discussions," Milly agrees, at the idea that she has appointments she can't wriggle out of. "I can keep an eye out for you in those. I think my mother's been to some of the meetings of that group you started, too, so I might be able to hear a few things from her."
... she still can't help but feel like there's something gnawing at her when she's at home, but that's not really Yuliana's problem. (She needs to move on that apartment. She really needs to move on that apartment.)
To Milly's credit, even though this is a sweet deal indeed, she doesn't immediately leap at it. Instead of leaping at the first (... well, second, really) adult to encourage her, she takes a long drink of coffee and lets the offer hang in the air for a bit. (It's never good to seem desperate, even if you are a young woman whose frustrations with the shape of the world are starting to outweigh her thoughtfulness.)
Setting down her coffee, she takes that hand and gives it a shake. "Perfect sense. It's been very nice to see you again. I'll talk to our mutual friend about the ideal place to deliver this."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana smiles, when Milly mentions her mother. "She's attended the Calling? How wonderful! Even if they're Britannian, I began those efforts because I wanted to help people, you know. There... really wasn't another conclusion I could reach, after so many people came together to help me escape the Institute." It was all over the news, and Milly seems quite the type to watch; she sees no reason to hide it. Modestly, she advances: "I hope she's able to get something out of it..."
It's an explanation which might go some lengths to contextualising all the humanitarian efforts of the Silent Calling -- the clothes and food and assistance they offer to the downtrodden peoples of Earth. Coming from a job which precluded trust -- on account of the state-sanctioned murders, and there were several salacious news pieces on those -- it may well make total sense that Yuliana wanted to do something better, seeing the kindnesses of others.
Her actions do tend to make sense, that way.
She notes the way Milly doesn't jump at her offer; she doesn't much begrudge her that, either. She's doing her best. And why wouldn't she, faced up with Yuliana? She waits, and, finally -- "Wonderful," Yuliana smiles, taking Milly's hand in a grasp which is firm but not painful. (There are a dozen little scars on her hands; more, on her wrists. No -- not like that. Circular.) "We have the avenues to handle the arrangements, so you just let her know. And if you'd like, that's business settled..."
Yuliana gestures, when her hand is freed. "But it would be a shame to let you go without enquiring how you're finding adult life, I think," she asks, and offers, as easily as breathing. "I understand the schools had their graduations, recently..?"
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
"She has! She was at your wedding, too," and now it sounds a little more genuinely like small talk, "though that one actually caught me off guard, since we got invitations through completely separate sources..."
Milly actually did spend a little time thinking through whether that had any nefarious implications when it happened, and promptly concluded she was being paranoid. (Yuliana's history being out in the open may have helped.)
Milly notices the scars on Yuliana's wrists and hands, but doesn't think over-much of them. With business settled, she's eager to move on, too; the topic catches her a little off guard, though!
"That's right. I graduated in March -- with almost a year's worth of transferrable university credit, too." (Milly's failure to graduate was, of course, naked abuse of the system, through and through.) Draining the rest of her drink, she says, "Since then, I've... had a couple of marriage interviews. One business proposal. My mother's given me latitude to accept some of those, too. ... Nothing's actually stuck out, though."
A little distantly, she murmurs, "Adult life isn't boring, but I'm definitely still feeling kind of bored."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"Really? Strange how that happens," Yuliana's first reaction is surprise, hearing that, which might (though doesn't necessarily) mean that she had no hand in arranging the coincidence.
(It really is news to her.)
She laughs, a hand veiling her mouth. "And let me guess -- university in Britannia is expensive business." Once upon a time, she might have talked about how education in the Republic was free to all, with no expectation that citizens ought to be burdened with a capitalist's loans to train themselves for a profession. Then she'd probably have to defend how REA universities focus so much on training the youth for professions, and then... well, it hardly matters now, because Yuliana's not of a mood to defend her homeland after all that sorry business.
"If the business proposals you've received aren't exciting you, no wonder you've been proactive in seeking out your own," Yuliana sympathises. "Say what you will about her activities -- Julia's not a boring woman. And if it's not for you, well..." She sips her coffee, with a loose shrug. "... a little work experience with her is unlikely to weigh too heavily on you, morally speaking," she settles on, after a moment's thought. "I don't think I have to tell you that not all criminals are created equal, but it's still worth saying. Mind you, I'd take some care with her associates -- some of them are far too rotten -- but not all of them, and not all villains, broadly speaking. So long as you have a strong sense of what you can stomach versus what you won't accept, you'll do alright."
<Pose Tracker> Milly Ashford has posed.
... is it expensive? That's actually been something of a blind spot for Milly, who mostly knows other rich Britannians and the occasional Eleven who's an absolute standout in a field, when it comes to her own peer group. It draws her attention to the topic, and Yuliana can no doubt tell that Milly is doing some mental math about the whole thing.
"... Four year tuition at most of the places I'm applying to probably costs more than that Desmatz," Milly answers, which gives her a little perspective. It's a little bleak to think about -- she'd known about injustices and imbalances in Britannian society, obviously, but having someone guilelessly underline it throws her for a loop.
Milly listens to Yuliana, who in this moment seems to be the voice of experience -- no doubt from a somewhat heavier conscience than the one she's hoping Milly ends up with. "We'll see how it goes," Milly agrees. ... does she have a strong sense of what she can and can't stomach? On the one hand, she does have a fairly well-expressed moral center, but on the other... something like this would've been unthinkable even a year ago. It's worth thinking on.
"It's been very nice to catch up with you," she says, with a smile -- and she does mean it. "I shouldn't keep you too long, though. ... it might be a little risky for both of us later." It's strange to be a person who has to think about that sort of thing, now; Milly isn't sure she likes it, but...
... well, the world needs to change or go extinct, and so does she. "Don't be a stranger! -- And be sure to use my new number."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"It's a lot, isn't it?" Yuliana asks, sympathetic, and she might be talking about the tuition fees, and not the realisation that Britannian society is so DEEPLY structured on capital or the capacity to borrow against exceptionalism.
It's nice to have deniability.
"Very few things in life can't be walked back, one way or another," she agrees, easily enough. "So see how you go."
She smiles, too. "You're getting a good sense of things, I see." Yuliana stands, flicking out her sunglasses and sliding them onto her face again. "I'll be sure to note down your number. Though --"
Yuliana pauses, briefly, and adds with a sidelong glance: "You're right to buy a new phone with prepaid credit, but make sure the system it's running won't compromise you, either. Just because the purchase can't be traced to you, or the number... that won't mean a thing if someone's able to access your messages remotely. Or locally -- I'd not leave it unattended. Treat it as you would your drink."
(Yuliana isn't one for alcohol, but that doesn't mean she's unaware of the standard advice given to young ladies.)
"Just a little friendly advice, since you're getting your legs under you," she adds, and wriggles her fingers in a little wave. "See you later, all right?"
Naturally, she leaves a sizable tip with the waitress when she goes to pay for her coffee. ... she's just left the exact amount it cost an extra time over. Is she just not very good at figuring out how tips work, coming from communism..?