2023-03-29: !aznablE

• Cutscene: !aznablE
• Cast: Yuliana Kafim -- and, in flashback, the Hei Huyao, Wen Yuan, and Parminder Chaudhri
• Where: The Silent Castle, and a memory
• Date: 2023-03-29
• Summary: Hounded by memories of Axis Shock, Yuliana pledges not to make the same... mistake..? twice.

---

In the guts of the REA's Intelligence department, Officer Cadet Parminder Chaudhri speaks into a headset: "We've got movement from Aznable." He will not see the battlefield; in his role, he doesn't have to.

Lieutenant Wen Yuan will see it only from a distance -- though not nearly far enough to escape its impact. Grimly, she takes aim from a far-off position; she rarely indulges in the stoic dispassion of her comrades, the Ghost Sisters, but all four elite snipers have to keep a level head in the face of what's coming down. The missile they aim is massive beyond measure, designed for earth-to-space contact; only her cyborg eyes, distinct amongst her Natural comrades, are capable of sighting the minute corrections they need to make. If they fail... well, they're in an expendable position. That's the will of the Party.

Lieutenant Yuliana Dispersal, on the other hand, has never kept a level head in her life.

"What's my angle?!" She yells, into her helmet's earpiece. "This entire operation is going to shit and I am FREAKING OUT, CAPTAIN! If Command doesn't get to me in the next five fucking seconds--!"

"Fuck Command," Captain Zhu Warning issues her, from his VF-171. (Yuliana's in one, too; she much prefers this control scheme to a Jegan.) "If you want to be a real officer, you've got to be able to make your own moral calls on the battlefield, Dispersal." His own voice climbs, and he yells: "Thirtylost! Li! Dispersal! I'm telling you to get in there and cut those defences down! That's my honour as a man of Zhu!"

Warning hasn't always been able to offer the stability and surety Yuliana Dispersal expects, on loan as she is from one of their many legitimate Medical centres; neither has he been able to offer Li Qiu Lim answers to his military mother's disappearance, or Lindy Thirtylost sufficient protection from bullying after she defected from Britannia to aid the Republic. But one thing he has always had is his principles, and he values them even more highly given such unethical assignments.

He could have tried to contact Command, even through the interference; he could have given them a chance to argue why something like this ought to happen. But if they're isolated up here... well, it's his call.

(Besides -- he knows how personal something like this is, to his men. There's a reason they're up here in space, despite how strange that is for soldiers from the DHZ.)

His Hei Huyao break, in the Jegans and Variable Fighters they use for space operations, and they meet Neo Zeon in violence. It is not without cost. "Li!" Lindy cries, as his Jegan is cut down, their comrade thrown to space.

"Forget it!" Yuliana yells, in turn, as her fellow Lieutenant moves to disengage.

Lindy's retort is sharp: "You're really being this heartless now?!"

"... his normal suit's already breached," Yuliana explains her sensor data, sagging into her sticks for one precious moment. She's closer; her cameras caught the blood. It's a breath of despair which costs her, as a Geara Doga rams into her side, but her transmitted response is immediate and strong: "Damn you, Zeon devils--!!" Unfortunately for that pilot, Yuliana has long been a melee specialist, and the enemy's beam blade can't match the brutality of her bludgeon.

No one in their Force reaches Char Aznable; that's neither their orders, nor their intent. But an army is not made of one man, legend or otherwise; between Lieutenants Yuliana Dispersal and Lindy Thirtylost, and their Captain, Zhu Warning, they carve down the men who would defend him without remorse. It's only one of them who realises --

"Captain, Neo Zeon are disengaging," Lindy reports, a shade unnerved. "It looks like... they're trying to stop this, too."

"Who the hell cares what they're up to?!" Yuliana demands, jetting after a fleeing suit to crush its cockpit with her bludgeon. It doesn't matter if she finishes the job, out here in space -- all she has to do is compromise the hull integrity, and physics does the rest. "Are you going to let them fool you like this?! Captain!"

"... Disengage from the turncoats," is Warning's conclusion, a grim moment later. "Sometimes you just have to rely on your opponent's humanity... none of us want this thing to hit Earth."

"I won't forgive--" "That's an order, Lieutenant!" The Captain cuts Yuliana off, barking sharp. His orders are clear: "Work with them to turn this thing back!"

"People can change their minds, Dispersal," the turncoat, Lindy, prompts her gently. They rarely see eye-to-eye, but she understands why this is hard for her, too.

"Not these people!" Yuliana howls, and howls with less meaning, as Lindy interposes her own Jegan between Neo Zeon and her comrade. "Rrrryaaahhh--!!"

"Lieutenant!" Captain Zhu demands.

"... yes, sir," Yuliana cedes.

She's a soldier. She follows her orders.

It's little enough reassurance, in her heart, that several Spacenoid rats don't live to see this miracle thanks to her.

...---...

Yuliana lowers her data pad, information loaded into it. "Leyasha was right... he's returned. The worst space could offer... Aznable!"

She is strong, for something still close to human, though she looks so gentle beside her wife. Strong enough to grasp the edges of the screen, and splinter; an agonising moment of haircrack tension, before the whole thing breaks in two. "Rrragh!" Yuliana yells, as she lobs them both at one of those fireplaces which always warm the room she's in. One half bounces off the metal grating there; the other slips through, with a little explosion as the electronic parts cook and overload.

"Do you think I'll forgive you?! You selfish wretch, who saw nothing but your own sorry kind! No miracle can absolve you of what you did to this Earth -- to its people!" Yuliana screams, before she sinks back into the couch, far too comfortable for her present distress. It's comforting, anyway. "And now you would raise hell again... I won't allow it."

Her lips curl with derision, exposing one too many teeth, sharpened and made real by that very same orange existence. Her brush with it was anathema.

"This time, unfettered, I will show no mercy," she promises, in spite of her Captain's memory. "None who stand with you shall live... you miserable charlatan." Her hands lift, to grasp at her upper arms, hugging herself tightly as those snakes wrap about her midsection just the same.

Holding herself... or holding herself back.

"All will be well," she soothes herself as she trembles, wound too tightly. The words are a shade too desperate, but the invocation is deliberate. "... all will be well..."