2018-06-28: If You Ever Change Your Mind

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  • Log: If You Ever Change Your Mind
  • Cast: Loren Voss, Elhaym van Houten
  • Where: Volgran Forest - Crash Site
  • Date: June 28th 2018
  • Summary: Elly and Loren cross paths at the crash site, she while she's returning to make a report, he while he's preparing to head out. Elly lends an ear. Loren makes a promise.

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    "...I knew it."

    Loren sifts through the auxillary supplies strewn out on the forest floor outside the crashed ship (what remains of a 'forest floor' anyway) before him, squinting at one of the pre-packaged components furiously. The nearly emptied pack rests alongside him. "Those idiots... this isn't going to be enough."
    'The idiots' in question are noticably absent at the moment.
    "Ugh. I'm going to have to go back and requisition this, aren't I." He straightens. "...Where are they, anyway?"
    His mouth twisting in some sort of mute frustration, he sets up properly repacking the bag.

    He's almost entirely convinced this assignment is because he messed up and got himself stabbed.

    He hadn't been conscious and lucid too long before the interviews had started -- naturally, the higherups wanted to know what, precisely, had happened. Not the mention the little fact of how he'd escaped.
    With his life, anyway.

    Which had -- after he'd recovered -- probably played a role in his assignments shifting to the ship itself, until his current reassignment to assist... those three.

    All those thoughts about working on my own being tough... I take it back.

    He really, really needs to be careful what he wishes for.

<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.

"Oh!" comes a familiar voice.

A VERY familiar voice.

It's Elly! She looks kind of dirty and kind of tired as if she'd just been walking a long way, which is in fact literally the case. "Loren! Hello - are you alone?" she calls, raising a hand.

SO SHE CAN MURDER YOU, LOREN?

Inwardly Elly thinks - this is a relief. I won't have to deal with a bunch of complicated questions from Loren... even if that was really only a potential thing, maybe the Major would have been able to spot out that something had... happened.

She begins to advance from the forest edge, moving like a Loren-murdering missile towards Loren Voss, waiving her blood-soaked (actually normal) cruel claw (hand) as she goes. In a vacuum this would be at least slightly cute.

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    His initial reaction is to stiffen, bolt upright as if detecting a predator's approach.
    Oh, he thinks. She's back.

    This is the point where he hurriedly rises to his feet, leaving the packing job only mostly completed, and rounds towards her.

    She's going to kill you, the thought nudges almost overeagerly. The corner of one of his eyes twitches.

    "...Van Houten. I was wondering where you'd gone," he says, the expression on his face perhaps hinting at the fact that, no, really, he doesn't. Why is everyone trying to kill me these days?
    He's got even less recourse in her case. Well... fine.

    He seems tense!

    "...More or less alone. Why?"

    In private the thoughts run wild: I dare you. I dare you to do it right now. Maybe then everyone will understand--

    "The rest of my team isn't here yet. We were going to ship out but we're low on supplies." He glances down at the scattered items, then back up at her. There's almost something... challenging to his gaze, though its ultimate origin may be unclear.

    ...Do they know about her??

<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.

The wild van Houten stalks its prey using a combination of stealth tactics, a harmless appearance, and bright red hair. This simpering methodology is thought to be very effective, but evolutionary pressures create a constant cat and mouse game between the wariness of its prey and the power and complexity of its simper.

"... I was gathering information," Elly says, with honesty. "This place is thick and dense, you know. I'll be delivering my report and my map sketches to the center office and getting a check-out before I return to the field. I know it's not very dramatic."

Her lips purse. She continues, more hesitantly. "... It's been rough for you, hasn't it? I'm sorry. Um."

And speaking of purses, she shifts her mostly-disguised survival kit. "I've got some things. I don't know how much use they'll be..."

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    "I'm aware," he says, briefly closing his eyes as if he has been struck by a sudden headache. "Anything new going on out there? I haven't heard much." Largely because he was sorting supplies for the last few weeks, once they were done asking him about 'Azazel' and anything else he could recall from that night.

    "It's fine," he says in answer to her concerned comment, a touch flatly.

    He'd died over and over and over--

    He stares at her for a moment or three more. Then he shakes his head and takes a step closer to her.

    "...Be careful. I don't know if Azazel found me by chance or not, but if it wasn't an accident, he has your information too." He folds his arms over his chest, his gaze shifting away from her. "If you see something like a storm of crows, or people who don't seem right, just run. Don't even think twice."

    She's going to try to kill him someday. He knows that. And yet, he can't just let her get killed by that bastard. She's a citizen, she's from Solaris.

    "He uses illusions," he explains, gaze back on her. "Whatever you think you're seeing isn't real. But it's impossible to tell what is."

<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.

Elly holds her purse with both hands. "Well," she says, "there's a war that's heating up... there are rumors that they're using ARMs. Or something like them. That's apparently very rare here, perhaps unprecedented... I don't know if it's something someone is doing or not, or if it's just..."

She trails off.

"Um," she says.

The purse opens...

* Get 3,333G from Elly's guilt!

"... A storm of crows? You mean more than a usual flock? I appreciate that you're telling me this - but -" Elly dithers for a moment, takes a deep breath, and looks up at Loren. With the worst expression of all: Sympathy.

"Sit down for a moment... can you explain that a little more clearly?"

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    "...Huh. Figures, though, after what happened in Lastonbell." He pauses for a moment, as if thinking it all over. "Just another ancient grudge that the Lambs are willing to die over," he says, without irony. "It isn't any different from that Aveh-Kislev war back home. I wonder if the higher ups are planning on getting involved..." He shrugs. "Well, it doesn't matter." It's not as if he really has a say in the matter either way.

    "Still, the matter with the ARMS is a problem. Figures the Lambs would go on and make things more complicated than necessary."

    She trails off, though, and so does he, by inches.

    He finds himself the recipient of... money?!

    But his explanation of the dangers 'Azazel' meet with the worst sort of reaction yet.
    His shoulders sag slightly.

    "...Yes, that means more than the usual flock of crows," he sighs, closing his eyes as if put upon. "They almost took up the entire sky. I should have run away right then and there."
    Instead of trying to run a few minutes later, when it was already far too late.

    He breathes out, and then as prompted, takes a seat.

    "...What I'm saying is, if you see something that shouldn't be possible, it probably isn't real. But you should run, because your eyes will keep lying to you anyway."

<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.

"I suppose some things never change," Elly answers Loren, softly. She laces her fingers together around the strap of her pouch again. "Do you think that someone brought the method over from Filgaia? It's a little strange - the concept is simple - I wonder if..."

"It was being suppressed."

She looks meek at the corrective statement. "I understand," she says.

"Which way should I run?" she asks. "Will I be able to know that I'm really running...?"

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    "What, do you think the people up here would have thought of it on their own?" The reply comes back a little too fast, a little too sharp. "...They're at least a few hundred years behind the technology back on Filgaia. There's a few anomalies, but I don't think any of them would have managed even basic gunsmoke-style ARMs without someone at least giving them the basics. They don't even have proper cannons on their ships."

    They're magic-powered. He'd checked.

    "It's probably because so many of them can use that weird magical power. 'The Gift of Althena', or whatever they're calling it..."

    But then, as he explains, she comes back with one quite important question:

    "Which way should I run?"

    To say Loren sort of visibly deflates would be an understatement. He stares down at his hands, then buries his forehead in them, fingers digging deep into his own hair.

    "Any direction. Away." He breathes out. "...I don't know. It was like being trapped in a maze..."
    A maze with no doors and no exits, only the realization that death would come from any/all angles. None of it had been real. But he can still remember that moment he'd turned around, and his brother's phantom had run him through.

    Probably, she'd die if she ran into 'Azazel'. And one of these days she'll kill him that would solve at least one of his problems. Just...

    "If I run into him again... I'm going to kill him." As unlikely a promise to see through to fruition as that might be, from him of all people.

<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.

"They've had fewer collapses," Elly says. "And gunpowder isn't very hard to make."

Once you know the trick at least. Her arms fold then as her lips purse.

He's terrified, Elly thinks. Her heart lurches. Despite it all, despite everything...

"It's alright," she says quietly. "I understand... it was horrifying, wasn't it? I'm glad that you came out through it. I know all of this is bearing on all of you so much... deVriese, van Buskirk, the Major, everyone... It's really admirable. I'm sorry that I can't do more to help you all." But I don't wanna. (She does not think that in so many words.)

(But it's a near thing.)

"Is there anything that I can do for you, Loren...?"

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    "True, but if they had it in them, this is a strange time to have unveiled a weapon that could tip the whole war in their favor. I don't think it's a coincidence," says the near-pathologically paranoid medic.

    I'm going to kill him.

    It's as near a comfort as is possible, even if it's also a potent lie to himself. Even the major couldn't manage it.
    I hate it when people lie, he still can't help but think.

    "..." Silence initially meets her response. It's alright? She understands?

    He straightens, letting his hands drop away. How pathetic do I look right now if she's saying things like that? he says, missing the part of the statement where she wraps the rest of them up in her expression of sympathy. He's always been self-focused first.

    "...Save it," he tells her at last as he looks over at her. "I don't know what you mean by any of that. --I don't need it."
    It is, of course, another lie. But he can't allow it. Certainly not from her.

    He stands, a little abruptly. "Go ask someone else if they want your sympathy. Maybe you can give deVriese a hug."

    He turns away. "I've got to obtain supplies from requisitions. If you've got anything else to say, say it now."

<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.

"..."

Elly's eyes turn to the ground.

She shrugs off the bag. "Yes," she says.

"If you ever change your mind, I'll listen to you gladly," Elly says. "And, this has a collection of 'gels' which I've found throughout my journeys. They may have bioactive compounds that are dangerous, and it's possible we can derive components from them."

She offers the bag forwards. "... but you would know how to do that, better than I would."

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    Even if there weren't the constant interposing of the presence that Loren is only vaguely aware of at best involved in this situation, even if he didn't have a strong dislike of Elly for her continued good graces and a well-respected family, it's doubtful that he would have accepted her heartfelt expression of sympathy.

    At the end of the day, he's a tightly-wound paranoid young man. So it goes.

    A look meets her sustained promise that she's willing to listen. Perhaps this is 'disdain'? He shifts, as if about to vocalize again that he doesn't need what she's trying to offer to him, and is indeed already shaking his hands when she offers the bag over.

    "...Gels? I've heard a little about them." Curiosity wins over his prickly nature; he takes the back and investigates the contents. "So this is a whole set of them, huh..." A pause. "You're right about that. I'll take them. Labs might be able to find something, or in a pinch, I'll see what use I can put these to."
    People use them as healing/medical; that much he understands. But how capable are these things? How long will they last.
    Maybe it'll help them on the expedition, somehow. It was largely medical where they'd come up short.

    And this thus is where Loren reluctantly says something perhaps unexpected:
    "Thanks, van Houten."

<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.

Elly smiles in response, feeling a stirring of warmth in her heart. Maybe, she thinks, he means it. Maybe he really is just stressed out.

Maybe we can make up...