2017-09-03: Trust-Building Exercise

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  • Log: Trust-Building Exercise
  • Cast: Cecilia Adlehyde, Loren Voss
  • Where: November City - Market Street
  • Date: November 3rd 2017
  • Summary: As per orders, Loren locates and makes contact with Cecilia. Unexpectedly, questions are answered.

<Pose Tracker> Cecilia Adlehyde has posed.

November City is both like and unlike the home of Cecilia Adlehyde; Adlehyde was one of the biggest cities on Ignas, with a population of thousands and an abundance of wealth. But while November is vying for similar status, it does so in a quite different way, and the dissonance has Cecilia feeling just that little bit odd, now that she's settled into the Dawn Chasers' temporary base of operations. For the moment, Cecilia is out on the streets - apparently alone, though presumably her companions are around somewhere in the vicinity, following a kidnapping attempt that has the whole group still on edge.

For her part, Cecilia has bought a "snack" from a street vendor that turns out to be an entire take-out carton of chow mein, which she has taken to a small outdoor cafe so she can abuse their largesse and also tables. She has an order for the kind of coffee you only know how to order if you're rich already placed..

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

Subterfuge and spying were not among his curriculum in Jugend, Loren thinks to himself as he heads through the streets of November City, where he is now apparently to remain situated until further notice from command.

Yet, nevertheless, it's ended up as a good portion of his work in Gebler, when outside the medical ward. So it goes, he supposes; whatever needs to be done, he will do.

There had been reports that Cecilia, the wayward princess of Adlehyde, had been sighted in the city. The Captain's orders had been explicit, weeks ago: find and make contact. There was another move to attempt, for the sake of regional stability. He can only hope that his conversation with Gwen bore fruit.

The Market District seems as if it might be his best shot, based on recent intelligence, which is entirely why he's here. Again. It's noisy, even compared to the day before, he notes, with some faint irritation.

It's after some time walking past stall after stall -- some still selling things that, technically, they shouldn't -- that he finally hits pay dirt, so to speak. The reporting had been quite thorough.

She's alone, he notes. Or at least, seems as if she's alone.

So this is how Cecilia finds herself approached by a blond young man in somewhat travelworn clothing as she sits at a cafe table with a large portion of food. "Miss," he says, planting a hand on her table before drawing upon more politeness than he usually manages: "Excuse me, but I'm new in town. Do you know where medical supplies are sold?"

He knows. He just passed the place.

<Pose Tracker> Cecilia Adlehyde has posed.

Is it subterfuge just to talk to an innocent, pure-hearted--ok yes, yes it is

Cecilia has already produced her chopsticks (we are at least that anime) and is preparing ot dig right in to her gathered feast when a man approaches and encroaches directly on her table. She looks up, with those big, trusting green eyes. "Ah..." she says, slowly. "I'm afraid I've only been in town a day or so myself," she says. "I haven't even started looking for things like that. Sorry!"

Not really her department. She can heal but she's far from the group's healer.

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

It definitely, totally is.

It just doesn't count as much as it would under normal circumstances (...well, for Loren) since Cecilia, valuable and useful or not, is still only a Lamb.

She's young, he notes in passing. ...That's right, about 16 or 17 or so based on the background notes. In other words, only just about his age. Loren readjusts his glasses with one hand and sighs, glancing away. As if somewhat frustrated, which, to be honest is effectively his ground state anyway. This isn't exactly requiring a high level of skill to perform like this.

"You, too?" He briefly closes his eyes. "Ugh. I've been across this avenue twice already... I think that woman gave me bad directions. I ran out of gels yesterday..."

He hesitates, then extends a hand her way as if in greeting. "...Thomas Blackwell. I'm a medical student. Or was. And you?"

<Pose Tracker> Cecilia Adlehyde has posed.

About 17 and a half by this point, in fact; it is tradition for the Princess to return to the Castle from Curan Abbey on her 17th birthday, and that happened around March of this year.

The man gets conversational, and Cecilia, because she is a pure and beautiful flower, responds positively rather than blowing off the man who is BETWEEN HER AND HER LUNCH. snack. after-lunch snack... "It seems there's a lot of people coming through right now. I'd imagine many are Drifters heading in after that battle by Milama..." She gives him an apologetic look. "So you may be out of luck anyway, I'm afraid."

Still, she consider the hand for a moment, and accepts it with a smile. "Nice to meet you, Mr. Blackwell. I'm Cecilia. I'm..." ...strange to say this, "I'm a Drifter myself, actually. A medical student? I didn't know November had a university."

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

To be fair, Loren might completely understand her being a little put out about being kept away from food--

Well, except for the part where he probably wouldn't, because he's Loren.

Nevertheless, for right now things are proceeding relatively smoothly. At least, from his perspective.

Just act as if she were a superior, he tells himself. Don't let her origin get in the way, we need to appeal to her better nature. Remember what the Captain said.

So, in other words, he's himself, minus several of his more abrasive characteristics. "Yes, I came in that way, too. What a mess..." He shakes his head. "It figures they could be sold out.

It's... a very clinical handshake as it happens.

"No, from Bledavik. There's a small school..." He glances away, as if uneasy about something. "...It's a long story. I won't bother you with the details. So, you say you're also a Drifter?"

<Pose Tracker> Cecilia Adlehyde has posed.

Cecilia's own handshake is the rather passive thing of a person who is not, in fact, supposed to do any work themselves. She doesn't know much about shaking hands and it shows, and she pulls it back perhaps a little too quickly. touching... "Ah, you saw the battlezone?" Cecilia asks, with a purse to her lips. "What a terrible sight that was..." So, she did, too, then. Which means...

She's thinking about something now, but Blackwell's reply about the medical school interrupts her. "I see. Well, I suppose Bledavik would have one. I haven't been, myself. Not that I recall, anyway." If she's been, it was when she was too young to now remember.

Ah. "Yes, I guess I am one. After what happened in Adlehyde...well, there's a lot to be done. So, I've set out with some companions."

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

For him, it's just someone else's hand. He might be a bit of a recluse when not in the field -- when those operations require him to talk to people -- but in the end, it's just another part of the body. As expected of someone who completed Jugend's combat medicine track, perhaps.

"I did," he replies, his gaze unfocusing a touch as he appears to contemplate the middle distance for a moment.

Three. Emperor-damned. Times. He had to run through there.

"...I saw that machine on the field." He exhales a breath, leaning on some of what he had pieced together while speaking to Lily the night before. "Fortunately, I wasn't hurt." Much. So she passed directly through the battlefield. It seems a number of Drifters had.

"So not anytime lately?" So much the better, he adds in silence. If she were to poke around Bledavik now, it could be unfortunate. Not least because Shakhan getting his hands on her without specific terms set by, ahem, understanding outside entities could cause them difficulties in the long run.

Adlehyde, she mentions. 'Thomas' nods. "You're from there? I worked in one of the refugee camps in the aftermath. Come to think of it, you've got the same name as the princess, don't you..."

It's a completely innocent question. Honest.

<Pose Tracker> Cecilia Adlehyde has posed.

Cecilia's head dips down. "Unbelievable," she murmurs, now offering a little more internal voice. "That someone would deploy something as horrible as a Golem at all, let alone as part of some....moronic turf battle! They were meant to protect this world, not..."

She cuts herself off, bitter eyes glaring. Now she doesn't even excuse herself before shoveling noodles in her face, stress and gluttony combining. She is an efficient eater, despite the amount. Maybe because of it.

She's made an alarming dent in her portion by the time Thomas makes her grimace with his question. Is that a record? she thinks. It's got to be close. "Yes," she says, low. She doesn't play it off so much as she sounds vaguely annoyed. "I do, don't I."

She looks up, and attempts to divert him. "Did you go inside? The Temple, I mean. It seems a number of people were driven through it to avoid the fighting."

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

Interesting, Loren reflects in private. Lily had been more pragmatic about the whole thing, even warned him to be careful, but then she was a soldier and between them they... had something in common.

Or at least he's been feeding her a story that would allow her to believe that.

But, Cecilia is a princess, a different sort of life altogether...

"Yes, it was unexpected," he comments with a bit of ironic understatement, lifting a hand to readjust his glasses. "Between the bombs and the soldiers and that, I was certain I was going to die out there." Which is... not actually a lie, considering.

He lapses into silence as she immediately consumes... well, an impressive amount of her food. He lifts an eyebrow a few seconds into it. He's not exactly a young man of slight appetite himself, so naturally, he's... he's...

...She sure is eating a lot. ...An incredible amount, in fact.

...Okay, maybe he is judging her by now.

Maybe that comment slightly misfired, though. She doesn't look happy about it. And normally, that wouldn't deter him, but he has to play this carefully. Searching his brains, he attempts to sift quickly mentally for an alternate avenue when--

She gives him one. He blinks. Okay then. "...I did, I didn't have a choice." In a manner of speaking, considering Ortell had gone in. "I take it you did, too?" He shifts as if uncomfortable, glancing away.

And truth be told, it's not just something relegated to his surface self alone. He's still trying to sort out that experience.

<Pose Tracker> Cecilia Adlehyde has posed.

"We watched it blast a landship a good mile and a half," she murmurs, setting her utensils aside. She dabs at her lips with a napkin, dainty-like. Her coffee arrived at some point - it looks abominably sweet, frothy and white with a stripe of some kind of syrup - and she sips at it as if hoping the motion will calm her a hair. "To turn that power on other humans...unforgivable," she murmurs. Apparently, she has an opinion about this!

But her look softens as he says he went within. "I had always intended to. We were making pilgrimace to the Temple." She chuckles, motioning vaguely with her hand. "Perhaps the Guardians revealed the Temple so that it could be reached. That would...seem to fit with what occurred inside."

She gives him a look now - quiet and searching. "They spoke to you. Didn't they? Do you have questions? I did train at Curan Abbey. Perhaps I can answer them for you."

It's funny how she got kind of annoyed by being called out but is simultaneously not really hiding who she is at all, huh?

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

Loren crosses his arms over his chest and reflects quietly that he saw it drop a landship practically right on top of them. It was almost quite terminal.

Professionally speaking, he also has an opinion about the Golem Sado, and unfortunately, it's also one that command shares; given their staffing, it's a certainity that he'll be on the team to 'handle' the problem if they do what he expects them to do and attempt to take it out. It's entirely possible that the whole matter of Cecilia and the Tear Drop won't matter in the long term because he'll be dead.

Hopefully his silence as she takes a drink of her coffee and expounds on the subject comes off as pensive.

"Is that possible?"

He would have written it off weeks ago. Hiding a temple, that is.

Does he have questions? Technically, yes and no. In practicality, the report section on Filgaian relgions should have covered it... except it kind of hadn't. It's one thing to read about native beliefs, and another to meet the beliefs in question.

He shouldn't have to ask. He shouldn't ask. And yet, it occurs to him that it might be a good idea to ask under the circumstances.

It might even help his case with her, he considers.

"...Yes," 'Thomas' answers at length, coupling the response with a short nod. "It seems they were desperate. ...I'd heard some things about the Guardian faith. But I never thought they actually existed. What are they?"

And that honestly is the crux of it -- finding the logical linchpin for the whole experience.

<Pose Tracker> Cecilia Adlehyde has posed.

Cecilia shrugs. "Age and the expanding desert can bury just about anything. Drifters learn that pretty quickly. As for revealing it...if they wanted it, yes, I believe the Guardians could do such a thing."

Her hands land on the table as Thomas visibly wrestles with his thoughts; her smile turns soft and soothing, a woman of faith pleased to allow someone to wrestle with their fears. Though her eyes fall somewhat to the side as he says he doubted they existed. "Many have forgotten," she says. "Adlehyde is probably the biggest Guardianist nation left, and even there, many take them as...metaphor. Like the One God of Nisan, or Granas; powers with many promises and, a skeptic might say, little to show of it. Do you know, in the faiths of the Seed Cities, and I believe Nisan as well, there is scripture that says that seeking proof of God is itself a sin?" She shakes her head a little. "The Guardians are not quite so...secretive. In Curan we are taught that the Guardians are everywhere. Reflected in everything about this world. There are Guardians for everything about the world and every part of the human heart, though many aren't terribly often worshipped."

'What are they', he asks her. She draws in a slow breath. "They are the power that sustains the world." She looks up. "And yes, they are desperate. They have grown terribly weak. Filgaia is weak, and humans are weak, and so, they too are. It is said that once they could take physical form as they pleased, but now..." She motions, open-palmed. "Those who bear their Mediums are their hands. They take priests, and Shamans; they reach out still, through the limited means still available to them. But they are not concerned with...nations, or politics. Anything that frightens the Guardians must necessarily be something that threatens the existence of Filgaia itself."

She looks up, eyes sad. "And the Demons terrify them. That is why they have revealed themselves so aggressively."

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

Normally, that would be a fine, logical explanation. Except they hadn't been able to find the temple initially, either, and while their coverage wasn't absolute, it...

But it's not something he wants to -- or should -- stand to argue about.

The nature of the Guardians, on the other hand...

'Some immense entity' was about as far as he was willing to go -- any further and he might as well say that gods exist, in a form. But even stopping there still leaves the logically-minded medic at a standstill -- they knew who he really was, he felt as if they had somehow been able to know the contents of his heart at a single glance (he knows this, somehow, impossibly) and left him with nothing but questions and a single stone tablet.

"That's what I had thought," he says, glancing down at the table for a moment. Had read, in the religious memorandum. "I've never been much for being devout," to put it plainly, "but I know a few things." So far this matches the briefing but--

...This matches what they themselves had claimed. But that can't really be true. The world can't possibly...

As if in disbelief, he shakes his head. As before, not all of it is to play the part he's assumed. Silence has settled in over the young alleged medical student. "...Then what you're saying is that I've been chosen to represent the Guardians? In their..." He was absent from the meeting at the Colony, as some Drifters were; perhaps he simply hadn't made it there at the time. A pity, it might have been enlightening for a poor medical student.

"...That's what they said. In the temple," he clarifies. "Something about an ancient foe... So they're terrified of the Metal Demons." He pauses, taking a breath. "Let me guess. We're to fight in their place."

At least, he thinks, if he's somehow unwittingly ended up serving an entity he can't properly comprehend, at least it's one that still aligns with his orders.

"...It's a lot to take in," he says at length, dryly. "...So what are you doing about it, Cecilia? This..." He shrugs, gesturing outwards. "All of this."

<Pose Tracker> Cecilia Adlehyde has posed.

Cecilia lets him take it in, though perhaps it loses some of the majesty of the moment because she's quietly shoveling food into her face while he's slowly experiencing personal semi-religious revelation.

Gulp. Swallow. She nods, and finally says, "I think they offered their power to anyone who went through," with a crooked look. "Which means...I don't know that you were chosen, so much as they hope you will use their power well." She looks back up. "If you walked away, I doubt anything would come of it one way or the other, but...a Drifter has power in this world. The freedom to fly..." She smiles, thin and wistful. "They wanted their power in the hands of people who would use it for the sake of this world. They're not...picky enough, to think about what humans would consider good or bad uses of that power. To them, anything that doesn't hurt Filgaia is fine. I think that's all it means."

What are you doing about it...she draws a breath. "I'm going to set out in search of the statues holding Mother's seal in place," she says, plainly. She sees no reason to lie, even though she doesn't know this man. He's seen the Guardians, after all. "Then...I'll have to find my way to the Demon fortress. Wherever it is..." Sh chuckles, averted eyes turning back up. "I was chosen. And the Demons took something very important from me."

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

The fact that she's eating hasn't gone unnoticed. Great, not only is he suddenly having to unpack things he hasn't had the luxury or opportunity to before, but she's going to sit there and eat while he does it. It takes willpower -- and forceful reminders of exactly how displeased he'd make his immediate superior officers (...all of them?) -- to hold his damn tongue.

"Oh." The clarification...

Well, it helps. Given the current state of the Guardians they're PROBABLY NOT going to suddenly enforce some terrible will upon him that runs counter to the wishes of his nation. Why would it? Solaris only has the aims of a peaceful future for Filgaia in mind. "So that's the level they think on. Global threats. And since they're unable to act themselves..." It's almost simple, he thinks, folding his arms over his chest again.

And then, to his question, she just comes out with it. Explains to him exactly what she's going to do. He lifts an eyebrow, eyes widening faintly. "So you're going to protect the statues holding the seal," he says finally, shaking his head slightly. "I haven't decided yet. What I'm going to do. There's a lot that I have to think on."

This statement is, at last, most definitely a lie. He might have his doubts, he might be grappling with revelations of late, but he knows at least perfectly what he should do because he will always be told what that is.

Right now, it's to assist this woman.

Which is why, in the next breath, he makes her an offer:

"...But you'll need money to do what you're trying to do, one way or another. For people like us, there's only one good way to do that. Since we're in the same boat... if you need assistance with that, just ask me. I'll need to do the same anyway."

By which he means: delve into ruins and take what they find.

<Pose Tracker> Cecilia Adlehyde has posed.

Look, bud, you interrupted her meal.

But she doesn't feel like, other than her title - a thing she doesn't disguise out of necessity so much as preference - she has much to hide. Her goal is one that is shared by all the peoples of Filgaia, right? Even if...the Black Ties did try to kidnap her a while back...

But she has stalwart allies, and Gwen promised to help her, and now this guy... "Do what you feel is right," Cecilia finally says, with that warm smile. "The Guardians grow strong when we are true to ourselves, and act boldly for what we believe."

....which apparently gets a surprising reaction, and she smiles, fondly but distantly. "Hah. I'm already sending anything beyond travel expenses back to Adlehyde," she says. "I...can survive a few nights in rough beds. Adlehyde needs the help rebuilding, first. Still..."

She looks up. "More companions are always welcome. I'll remember you, if I ever find I need a hand. Thank you."