2023-09-02: Day By Day: Night Sky
- Cast: Sousuke Sagara, Seolla Schweizer
- Where: Merida Island
- Date: U.C. 0097 09 02
- Summary: Sousuke's willpower has thoroughly flatlined - Seolla's is thankfully at the crest of its sine wave to support him. ...Though the causes prove to be...
<Pose Tracker> Sousuke Sagara has posed.
Mithril's SRT performs various tasks around Merida Island. As the unit's premier combatants, many of them spend time training, but a sound and honed mind is also important to combat. Mao works with the engineers, Kurz does...... .........whatever he does, and Sousuke Sagara does what he's always been good at: Finding someone who needs an idiot with two working arms to hold a box.
It's the last day of Deculture Festival. The Colonel isn't on the island. Obviously.
Sousuke Sagara, face a neutral mask, walks into the main hangar loaded down with two sturdy boxes of Various Knicknacks for the maintenance team. He sets them on a pile near one end of the room, turns...
Across the hangar floor, the Arbalest kneels in its passive posture. As usual, a table sits nearby, hooked up to a monitoring computer to facilitate conversation with AL.
Sousuke's eyes slowly lid to a glare, and then he turns away, heading back the way he came.
<Pose Tracker> Seolla Schweizer has posed.
The Deculture Festival! Every so often, Seolla is asked about that - surely she's embracing her ability to experience a very ordinary high school life and to connect with her peers and to do all the stuff she wasn't able to do before.
...and thaaaaat's usually where Seolla has to awkwardly trail off. Truth be told - while she's been passable with her grades, while nothing really bad has been happening at her Jindai enrollment, Seolla's...not as involved as maybe she should be. A strange pit opens up in her core thinking about it. After all, as much as Seolla's loyal beyond reason to the Mithril staff, that's because...well...they're a part of her life, and they depend upon each others' lives. They've been there for Seolla through one of the most difficult changes she's ever had. And without that...
It's just extremely hard for a prickly-natured, often somewhat apprehensive girl to actually make friends!
-So it's Seolla who is herself surprised when she strides her way into the hangar, humming a rhythmic little tune to herself, only to see Sousuke just about to stroll out. "Oh! Sousuke. You're still here, I thought you'd be at the - ohhhh, right. You had your assignment changed over, I heard, I guess you wouldn't have gone to that. Uhm. ...Uhhh before you ask, it's just really not my scene, when I do have free time I really just prefer to...do something...that doesn't involve so many people and so much talking. Like a bike trip! ...you seem a little worn down, uhhhhm." Fidgeting fingers together, Seolla carefully sets aside an AS internal replacement monitor and takes a seat on a little railing, sipping a water bottle once. "Everything okay? Have you had lunch yet-?"
<Pose Tracker> Sousuke Sagara has posed.
Kaname's trick appears to have been brainwashing. Sousuke's still not sure what draws her and Kyouko together...
Seolla's slip earns her the flattest stare she's ever received from a human being who is ostensibly still a person. "It's not a problem," is his eventual reply, and he pulls himself away, though his gaze turns slightly downward. "Though, I'm sure Tokiwa or Inaba would be happy to show you around. They're very friendly girls." All of them are. Alouette, Sho; that transfer, Gemini Sunrise. To say nothing of the boys like Onodera and Shinji Kazama and--
His eyes glaze over, distractedly thinking of faces lost to him.
It takes him a second to look back up at Seolla, eyes visibly searching sense memory for what she asked him. "Oh. ...I have not." He glances to the part she was carrying. "You don't have to stop what you're doing for my sake, though."
<Pose Tracker> Seolla Schweizer has posed.
A sliiiight little tension in Seolla's cheek, thinking of some of the awkward encounters she's had. The face of the problem is that people who are too openly friendly can't help but fill Seolla with a bit of an irrational flight or fight response. "I...iiiit's a little less about being 'shown around' than it is...the tough stuff that comes after. Nn. ...doesn't help that I've gotten into a few fights...cried a few times in ways people didn't understand..."
The rote and flat little response earns Seolla a brief glance to the monitor she was carrying, and a head-tousling shake later, Seolla puffs, "It's kind of a side project really, nothing too intense or important. Kurz was complaining about some side-display calculator, said there was a weird red line running along it, and I've been wanting to learn a little about how these ASes are built, in case something breaks out in the field."
"What's way more important is - nnn. ...I mean. ...Yeah. Let's just go with: 'that's why you're off'. I know I get way grouchy when I'm hungry, so I'm getting you to the canteen ASAP." And with that, Seolla grips Sousuke's forearm quite shockingly tight, and drags him along the halls to the cafeteria with the kind of torque in her step that'd more match with a golf cart than a girl around his age. March march march.
<Pose Tracker> Sousuke Sagara has posed.
Sousuke's expressions had been softening for a while, something passing for empathy and thought in his face.
His face is a dull mask as she explains herself. "I see," he says. "Yes. ...they often do not understand what it is like to place your life on the line. The logic of a world that isn't at peace."
He turns his gaze aside, murmuring, "That's why it's so..."
...he leaves the thought unfinished, moving on to a different one: "Kurz complains about most things," he notes. "But understanding every aspect of your machine is a good impulse. Field service for a third-generation machine is extraordinarily difficult, but there are some serviceable parts like the monitors, yes."
His head tips slightly, just not quite following Seolla's point. "...your metabolism--" Sousuke begins, irrelevantly, but Seolla hauls him off with a surprised "whoa!"
... TIME PASSES ...
Merida Island has plenty of amenities for the several hundred-strong crew of the Tuatha de Danaan and base staff. One's the bar where Sousuke usually ends up, but, perhaps owing to nobody particularly wanting to deal with any of the rest of the SRT, the duo this time ends up at a mess hall with tables and chairs laid out.
<Pose Tracker> Seolla Schweizer has posed.
Seolla's metabolism definitely operates on a 'have a bit to eat every like two hours' type pace - that's why she usually favors the cafeteria as a quick, grab something and get it over with trip. Accordingly, Seolla doesn't actually fill her plate very high - a modest meal of a little bit of spaghetti, a single meatball, cole slaw, and breadfruit is all she takes, and she does it with the speed and efficiency of a trained operative, almost like she's timing her rate of food acquisition.
"Oh, it's rare I actually get it, but the papaya pudding's really tasty, even if it looks a bit weird and soupy sometimes," Seolla points out, to give the listless seeming Sousuke a bit more of a guiding star and to make sure the boy actually EATS a bit. No depression forgetting to eat stuff in Seolla's book!
Finally, Seolla's usual table is predictably one at a quieter corner, and she's sipping carefully between the kind of eating pace that applies a thorough, consistent vacuum pressure to the well balanced meal. "...the fact that you immediately suggested who to talk to means you probably were enjoying it at Jindai though, huh? It doesn't take a genius to put two and two together there. I mean, you had that big fancy prom appearance that you went all out for, and danced with Tessa and Kaname alike. ...Like for real, I was a little bit...jealous, in a way. Of the people who glowed so much there. Didn't let it get to me, but I could tell that, despite everything, and all the weird shenanigans you'd get up to there..."
"...you're missing it more than you thought, huh. Or is it...more than that? Why do I feel like that's not the whole story, actually..."
<Pose Tracker> Sousuke Sagara has posed.
Sousuke's eating habits are... a mess, anyway. Now, anyway. At school he'd eat regularly, sure, but mostly his own rations and such. Now that he's got cook staff again, he just eats periodically. Just whatever's available during meal hours.
There was a sandwich set, he got that this time and little else. ...there's a pudding cup grabbed with clearly zero thought because he realizes only afer he sits down that he didn't get a spoon. ...he's got a fork for his vegetables, at least. That'll do.
"Thank you for the recommendation," he says, a bit automatically, and is digging in when Seolla pins him directly to the wall with excellent questions, and he looks like he just got a bullet to the heart - awake for the first time in weeks but just as much like the pain is unimaginable. "I," he says, the word slipping out of his mouth, before his face dips down.
"It was a mission," he says, dully. "Getting involved in the lives of the people there was only ever supposed to be a cover."
He says it as rotely flat as possible because absolutely no human anywhere believes that, least of all him. She said he glowed... ... "It's over now," he says, and grimaces and scratches his head, physical reactions finally coming out of him. "I have to get over it, that's all.'
<Pose Tracker> Seolla Schweizer has posed.
"...Honestly, Sousuke, do you think I'm going to believe that?" Seolla waggles her fork in Sousuke's direction with every word, punctuating each sentence with a big swig of water. A slight scowl crosses her face, eyes narrowing in that usual slightly sour way she gets.
"See, that look on your face that you have to just 'get over it' is exactly the wrong way to go about it. Did you get to say goodbye to them before circumstances pulled you away? That's probably it. Really, the thing I hate...the thing I really, really hate more than anything in the world, is when someone's gone before I can say goodbye to them. Cause you know what?"
A twist of her fork to pull in the last swirl of spaghetti, followed by another pull of water, and a faint wiping of her lips. "...you can't help when you start to care about someone. You can't! You just can't. It pisses me off when I...when I realize that I'd do anything for someone else, and I think you get like this instead of getting angry. Yeah. I've never seen you steamed before."
Seolla sighs, and pulls back into her chair, briefly looking through her oh so heavily privated and anonymous account's rather...small VERTEX contact list, swiping at her otherwise offline phone briefly. "...nnn. When you get the chance, if you got any contact information from them, tell them that you'll miss them. Even if it feels unlike you. Just...maybe that'll help you out a bit, okay?"
<Pose Tracker> Sousuke Sagara has posed.
There's exactly one time everyone's seen Sousuke really, truly upset.
Screaming at Gauron to stop calling him 'Kashim.'
Seolla's fierce browbeating mostly just makes him wither where he sits. Who could work up the anger when she jabs him right at what he's thinking about every time something starts to build up.
It takes him over a minute to really work himself back up, eyes down, head hanging. "I didn't," he says. "When the order came, I couldn't think straight. Before I even thought about saying goodbye, it was too late. I was back here."
He shakes his head. The strength is out of him; he doesn't raise his hands to even approach his food. "I'm not to communicate with them. To keep my focus on the Arbalest. Colonel's orders."
It almost sounds like he's breathing out his own soul when he says, "That life...was the property of Mithril."
<Pose Tracker> Seolla Schweizer has posed.
---Something deeeeeefinitely...doesn't add up right there.
Seolla's just on the verge of seeing it. Her brow knits in place. ...Since when were they that strict, about little obvious conundrums like that? After all, they took such good care of her when she arrived, but they won't even let Sousuke tell his classmates that he's leaving? Just to pilot some robot, important as it is?
It just doesn't sound right. It can't.
"...When they gave you that order, what did you say?" Seolla whispers after a short delay. "...I won't tell anyone else. I just want to know if you...argued, a bit, or just...did your duty, accepted the conditions, and now you're miserable about it. ...I...don't want them treating you like a dutiful and diligent machine that doesn't care about anyone, because I know it's not true."
"...that life is yours, after all."
<Pose Tracker> Sousuke Sagara has posed.
Scrolling through her phone, maybe Seolla sees it.
The empty spot where Sousuke's Vertex used to be.
What did he do? He looks at her. Something churning through that thick head of his, before the weight of it pulls his gaze back down. "I screamed on the balcony for the intelligence agent who'd replaced me," he says, flatly. "...it was all pointless. All I'd ever been was bait to them. The order itself was issued remotely so I could not protest until my return, anyway." ...
His jaw sets with something poisonous clawing in his heart. "The Colonel," whom he has not referred to by name in weeks, "was still enjoying her time with GUTS for several days after. Of course." A spite coiling through him. Is it familiar?
Like the very first seeds of what became Chienne's rage?
He continues, rallying himself. "When I protested, she cried. That I didn't understand the difficulties she faced. That the Arbalest is unavoidably critical to the safety of everybody and that I am inescapably critical to its operation."
He scoffs, then, something sludgy in his soul escaping his mouth as sound. "That unreliably machine. What a bad joke."
<Pose Tracker> Seolla Schweizer has posed.
...Oh Seolla does see it. Of course she does. Her contacts list is so tiny as it is. Leina's just about the only one she actually regularly talks with this way. Her eyes go wide. It is the first of several cold, distant, echoing shocks.
Everything Sousuke says is yet another. Seolla's hands grip the side of the table, her vision going distant, like everything her comrade's saying is collapsing into a tiny box, far away from her perception. She couldn't have imagined it. That the funk Sousuke was in wasn't just some minor hurdle - what he describes can only feel like the world collapsing in around him.
"What the-" Seolla blurts loudly, before intentionally constraining herself down to acceptable whispering levels. "...k...h. Wh...why's it gone this bad for you, this quickly...? It doesn't make...any sense. ...a...ah. All I'm boiling with is...is...that I need to talk some sense into Tessa, b...but..." She swallows at the mere thought of it. No. Wait.
...no, that's wrong. Right?
...there's no way Tessa would make such a mistake, taking away everything Sousuke was truly living for in the blink of an eye. There's no way she'd get it this wrong to tell someone they're important for only one thing, and to crush his spirits such that there's no WAY he could actually do that.
...deep breath. Fingers pinched around her lips, before Seolla forces out, "...t...there's no way in hell I'm equipped to talk Tessa down like that. If I tried to say no to her, I'm sure she'd...be really amazing...at figuring out how to tell me I'd actually agreed."
...something a little poisonous fills Seolla just then too. A furtive glance at her surroundings. A barest of shivers.
...did she really make the right choice, trusting these people?
Her hand reaches out, and clasps Sousuke's shoulder tightly. Wordlessly for a little while.
"...if they really said that to you, then...it's unreasonable. ...that's exactly the kind of ways they used to talk to me back then."
<Pose Tracker> Sousuke Sagara has posed.
"She's right," Sousuke notes, but there's venom dripping from his voice. "On activation, the Arbalest's structure synced itself to me alone. The lambda driver won't work for anyone else, ever again." He grunts, irritation bubbling through his throat like fire and bile. "That's why. Because nobody else can do it."
"Something only I can do," he says, the words of hope like ash and worse in his mouth.
He sits there, stewing for several long seconds while Seolla speaks. When she does reach out, he looks up, and his gaze has hardened. "...I was only ever a mercenary," he reiterates. "The operation in Jindai was...a protection mission, and attending school was merely part of that mission. Ordering a soldier to a new duty is routine."
He stops, and jerks his gaze away from Seolla. "....Apologies," and does an impressive job of masking himself so he doesn't look like he was just about to vomit an ocean of poison from his ruined heart. "I am having difficulties keeping myself in order, it seems like. Thank you for the invitation. But I should... ...go."
He stands, moves away with some speed, stung too deeply from daring to actually look at his own thoughts.
His plate sits silent, barely touched.