2018-02-27: Hope
- Cutscene: Hope
- Cast: Elhaym van Houten
- Where: A simulator, beyond the infinite
- Date: February 27th, 2018
- Summary: Elly van Houten gets the germ of a plan. Will it survive contact with friends, much less the enemy?
The air in the simulator was cool. Crisp. Humidity was perfect, and there was a low-key breeze running through the space, just like the cockpit air circulators. It was a place that was perfectly comfortable between runs, such as this moment.
It did not feel like home to Elly van Houten any more.
-=-=-=-
Elly's mind wandered during this cooldown period. The training program was a skills refresher drill intended to put her at the peak of performance, and she knew that they had been running such programs for hundreds of years. It would stretch her abilities, refresh what had faded, and leave her sharp. The judgment of the software left her watching a level blue sky, now, with a small message in the corner: drink liquids, and await the next course.
Just like that.
The pen that Elly had used to write the note she had left for Fei Fong Wong, written on the back of a cardboard slip that had been a receipt for clothes laundering, had not been so smooth and comfortable. It was a fidgeting thing, with a sharp metal barb for a point. The stylus and inkpad were a thousand times smoother. What she had written was more important, though, than the nostalgia of material culture:
I've been recalled. But I'm coming back. I'll bring back what I can. Please, don't worry about me.
Elly shut her eyes.
Why had she written that?
It would be easy for her to slide back into her course of life, she knew. It would be the matter of two weeks' time to get transferred back to Etrenank. Pride kept her out, she knew, more than the thought of protecting her people, or anything so high-minded as she heard sometimes from the people she had met across Ignas.
Elly had thought about this in the course of her journeys, her incessant wanderings, when she'd had a lot of time alone. She would like to say she was brave, but she wasn't particularly so. It would be romantic to say she had been drawn to Fei, and that was not exactly wrong.
But the moment when she'd made this decision came when she thought of those children at Wayside Village in the third class dormitories, which she had seen only three times - once in school days, twice in passage to another place.
Now, of course, perhaps it was too late.
Elly lapsed into a comfortable melancholy.
Seconds passed. The simulator still didn't reset. Perhaps the Tzadkiel's computers had other tasks to attend to first; perhaps the system had detected a fractionally slower reaction time for her.
Reaction, Elly thought. Everyone was reacting out there. To their past, to their old conflicts, to their needs. She was sitting up here, in this climate-neutral piece of advanced equipment, a simulator worth a king's ransom - quite literally perhaps - and...
Why did she deserve it?
All trains came to the terminal at the end of that thought. For a few moments Elly was at peace, albeit a peace nearer to that of the grave than the woods.
Nothing is terrifying me here, Elly thought. Here, in this moment, I'm safe and comfortable, not in any pain, not in any danger. She reached for the sipping straw, to handle the closest thing to physical distress she felt.
Another thought came to her. From somewhere she knew not where; the deep closets of the mind, perhaps.
Here, right now... I don't have to react, she thinks.
I can think ahead.
I'm nothing special, Elly thought with a hesitation, tinged with frailty. I suppose I'm clever, and a decent actress. I can pilot a Gear; I have a strong Ether response; and, according to many, I'm a 'Destroyer'.
And...
Tomorrow, Elly thought, I'll be flying Vierge... fully fueled, in combat loadout.
Practical questions emerged. The hopeful sprouts of a dream, of a plan. Perhaps, she thought, perhaps it could all be saved. Because, Elly thought, Vierge isn't just a Gear: it may not be the strongest, but it had something to it that had never been seen before. Something that might be without precedent. Something -
The screen in front of her changed, chimed, and that soothing female voice spoke to her in her native language. "This drill will improve your skills in the field of"
"Animum Ether Response Offense Drone Control."
Maybe, Elly thought, as the screens filled with shapes and text, I can master them in time. Maybe I truly can destroy what needs destroying...
And then, I'll be able to stop.