2018-08-27: Bitter
- Log: Bitter
- Cast: Loren Voss, Kaguya
- Where: Volgran Forest
- Date: August 27th 2018
- Summary: In the forest near where the Tzadkiel fell, Loren runs into a familiar face. Words -- and strange sort of understanding -- are had.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Months ago, a silver bird had fallen from the heavens into the depths of Volgran Forest. Some people had investigated, naturally, but Volgran Forest being what it was, those who went searching came back empty-handed or didn't come back at all.
Sometimes, people disappear in this forest.
If someone had calculated the rate of disappearance over the last few months, though, they would have noticed that more people had disappeared than was typical.
The reason lies deeper in. Visible from this stretch just barely through the trees, the great silver body of the Tzadkiel lies still and silent.
Patrols run further afield than here. Technically speaking, Loren is within the bounds of 'safety'.
But only so many people made the jump to Lunar aboard the ship, and there are only so many to spare at any given time. They can't cover every inch of forest.
Call it 'clearing his head'. Getting some fresh air. Or something. He can only stand being aboard the ship for so long at a stretch.
It's been like that since they landed. Maybe it's the feeling (stronger of late) he doesn't quite fit in. Maybe it's the sense that they'll probably never get back to Filgaia. Or perhaps the restless thoughts that run ceaselessly in his head.
He leans against the trunk of a massive tree and sighs. He won't be able to stay out here for long without breaking the rules.
here's an irrational part of him that wants to run away. Not from anything, not to anywhere. Just run.
It's gotten louder of late.
"...This is stupid," he mutters, to no one but the trees.
What good is it, even? To anyone or anything?
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
Months ago, Kaguya heard the stories of the silver bird... And while she had some interest, business quickly overcame the opportunity to go poking around in the forest. She of course doesn't worry very much about disappearances; it's not her problem. It's unlikely to affect her. ...But neithr can she entirely run off on her own now that she's leading an army back to their homes.
...A little walk isn't so bad, though. She had the aide who'd materialized to assist her prepare some things that would keep her busy, and proceeded to walk into the forest for a bit. There were some nerves at the leader going off on her own--
But Kaguya suplex a magic boar. She should be fine. There's a certain amount of awe some of the soldiers have of her.
...And to maintain it, she'd prefer to handle her medical affairs in private anyway. So, out of curiousity, she wanders a bit...
And speaking of louder--
"Is it?" Kaguya asks Loren brightly, dressed in fancier attire than before, in the green of her battle armor underneath silks. She tilts her head, towards where she heard the voice. "Now that's interesting."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He says nothing, just pushes off the tree he's leaning against to round on whoever just spoke, sidearm drawn. Solarian ARMs really aren't like anything else on Filgaia, rivaled only by the likes of ancient technology... and Veruni weapons.
...Of course it's her.
"You followed me, didn't you?" Loren asks, ARM still trained on her as he takes one slow step forward.
"If you know what's good for you, you'll leave, Veruni."
His breathing is shallow, one traitor of the more true emotional current running deep beneath the surface.
When's the next patrol due? Shortly? Another hour?
If he shouts, will anyone hear him?
How long will it take them to find your corpse?
What can he do but bluff?
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
Kaguya glances down once to the pistol levelled at her, then shifts her strange green eyes right back up to Loren's face. She seems entirely unperturbed by this situation, which probably makes Loren feel terribly much better. He asks if she followed him, and she lifts an eyebrow. 'If she knows what's good for her...'
The small Veruni laughs, faintly. "Paranoid much? I almost get the impression that you don't like me very much."
She smiles. "I told you before. I'd like to be friends."
She lets that hang for a beat, "Your breathing's shallow. I notice things like that, since breathing is sometimes difficult for me." But then, "But no, I'm not leaving yet, I just got here. And no, I didn't follow you."
"I'm just taking a walk away from the camp of the army I'm leading. Hy... High... High something or other," she practically chirps.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
"That's because I don't," he says, pausing as his gaze once again glides across her armor, "like you very much."
Another pause follows soon after. "That's because we're enemies. You're a Veruni." He does not explain what he is; perhaps he expects her to already know, or doesn't care to explain if she doesn't.
"..."
His gaze narrows behind those glasses he wears, a strange sheen across the glasses as they catch the light just so. "So what if it's shallow? You're intruding here," he says again, shifting as he takes one more step towards her.
Would it even work if he shot her? He can see the body armor under her clothing, and when it comes to Veruni gear... he doesn't know anything.
His gaze flattens. "Hyland," he corrects. "Great. So the army's nearly on our footsteps," he snaps off without thinking, only to grimace. "...What do you want, Veruni? Taunting me so more?"
He's taking this one awfully personally.
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
"See?" Kaguya asks. "It's fine, you'll get over that," she answers, casually. And a grin, "See, you say we have to be enemies. But I don't think it's true." That's not actually what he said. This does not appear to deter Kaguya at all. "I think it means you're halfway to civilization!"
She grins. ...She wonders, internally, if there's something to those glasses, to that odd sheen, but maintains the airheaded appearance that she favors. He takes another step. "Am I intruding?" Kaguya asks. "Because this is Rolance territory, and you're not Rolancian."
His correction gets a beaming smile. "See, they don't have to be. I don't have to mention that I found anything interesting out here at all. Just a normal walk in the woods."
A beat, "What do I want? I want a nice bed, with some high thread-count sheets, a cute outfit for my girlfriend, a nice vegetarian dinner, and to make a friend."
"Is that so bad, Gloomy? If I wanted to taunt you, I'd ask you about the redhead who gave you shit in the lab. But I don't!"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
"I'm not saying we have to be enemies," Loren presses, glowering at Kaguya. "I'm saying we are enemies. Your people are the enemies of my people." Even if they haven't had a formal clash in some time, and traditional Solarian practice is to leave sleeping dogs lie, particularly when there was Shevat (and more recently, Metal Demons) to worry about.
'You're halfway to civilization!', she says. "Really," he replies, as if utterly unimpressed.
"Is it Rolancian? At this point, it might as well be Hyland. Or whatever. We landed--" he cuts himself off abruptly, leveling a long look at her. "So what's your point?"
She gets to her point. What she wants is to...
"...If your army comes in here, they die," he states simply, knowing all the while the mathematics might not be so cut and dried. There's a reason they didn't try any overt shows of force here.
And even he can't hold out on that front forever, even if it means there's only a chance they'll be defeated. Having anyone at all come in here is bad enough.
"...Fine," he says, lowering the sidearm. Holstering it.
The reminder she tosses him amiably about Elly, though...
If looks could kill, Kaguya might be mortally wounded.
"Fine. You've made your point. You had better hope patrols don't catch up to you though."
If he could only be so lucky. Knowing his luck, they'd mistake him for collaborating with the enemy, or something. Ugh.
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
"Blah blah blah political things that don't actually affect you. Come on. Just because you heard our peoples fought once, you can't even talk to me? You know I'd expect you to be more open-minded." ...Why?? There doesn't seem to be a reason. His unimpressed reply though gets a nod. "I mean, I bet you guys actually have refrigeration and TV."
That's a tidbit of information. 'We landed.' 'Whatever', of course of course, but--
"Maybe!" Kaguya acknowledges cheerfully about her army. "But humans are good at dying. And there's an awful lot of them." ...When Loren finally holsters his weapon though--
"Yikes," Kaguya laughs. "You really don't like her." A beat, and a shrug. "I'll take my chances," she says. She waits a beat.
"...Actually I'm kind of curious about you," she answers. "I mean, not the part where you've been a jerk consistently even though I've been mostly helpful. Mostly--"
"How's a human from a fancy human society get as bitter as you are?"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Loren folds his arms over his chest. "That's exactly why not. They," he says, putting stress on the word, "could assume I'm working with you, or that you've compromised me in some way."
In other words, they'll just assume he's a liability. Again.
Even that thought sends a cascade of ugly rotten emotion up through his chest.
"...So what if we do?"
Humans are good at dying.
Well, he can't argue that point.
No overt response comes when she comments that he must really hate Elly; he just shakes his head, maintaining his gaze on Kaguya the entire time.
His shoulders tense. He takes a half-step backwards. "Curious?" In him? "Why?"
He stares at her for half a second or more as she explains, then huffs out a sound that's close to being a laugh. "Who's the bitter one? You don't seem like you're all that sweet-natured yourself. Aren't you the one with the army and the girlfriend?" He pauses, as if weighing the situation mentally. "Oh, right. Your disease. Too bad, I suppose."
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
"They trust you that little?" Kaguya asks. "Wow. That would be pretty terrible, huh? The truth is, I don't really care about compromising you or your people. It's just not my field. I'm a botanist, not a..." She considers. "Hmm, what's the word?" She says something in an unfamiliar language, instead, and laughs.
"No no, that's a good thing," she says about what they have. "You get it, right? How backwards most of the world down there is? I just thought we'd have that in common, that's all."
Curious, she said, and she said it for a reason. He laughs, and Kaguya doesn't laugh in return--this time her gaze remains entirely even, a strange quality to her watching. "I know why I'm angry," Kaguya answers. "And it's because of the Guardians. But I'm doing something about that. ...Can you say the same? That you're doing something about why you're angry?"
"I guess, putting it another way..."
Beat, "It takes one to know one. So I want to know. Figuring out how humans tick is kind of a hobby of mine."
"So, if you indulge my curiousity a bit, I'll go away before your higher-ups assume you've taken up with the enemy. Deal?"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He sniffs as if to dismiss the sentiment.
Probably, no, most of them don't trust him very much, at least the way he figures. That, or they just brush him aside altogether. Which one's worse? Being a liability because you're actively working against the cause, or being a liability because you're not up to the cause?
He pauses. "Saboteur," Loren suggests, a watchful eye on her even if -- particularly because -- he's holstered his weapon.
Yeah, he gets it alright. How fallen the people of the surface are. How they make their own disasters. The tilt of his head is nearly imperceptible, but it's there nonetheless.
Even on the moon, it's the same old story. Maybe people of the surface just can't ever learn.
So, does that count as something in 'common'?
Being so overtly watched like that is uncomfortable, even as he tries to put on a show of strength before her and hold his ground. Angry, huh. ...Yeah.
Yeah, he is angry. Angry, and a whole lot of other things.
"Why am I angry?" He exhales out a breath, blue eyes meeting her green.
Angry because--
They think of him as a liability.
Because he's stuck on the moon.
Because he tries and tries and it comes to nothing.
Because he doesn't have what he deserves.
Because he's alone--
But it really boils down to one thing:
"Because someone else died and left me with the debt," he states quite honestly, quite openly.
And there's no way around that except to keep on, through everything that infuriates him and steals his hope from his grasp. It would be the same no matter what.
So he might as well bitterly struggle on.
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
"Yes," Kaguya answers cheerfully, "That's the one. Human languages are really hard to keep track of," she admits with a sigh. ...But she sees it--she seems something there they can agree on at least, something that isn't an argument, and she's pleased with it. It's encouraging, to keep going. It's a piece. And so--
She starts up into blue eyes. She waits for the answer. There's a lot there, after all, a lot it could be, but she can't quite find the puzzle piece--
But when he states what he does so simply, she looks thoughtful for a moment, and then nods, once. Just a few more moments, to memorize that expression.
"Thank you," Kaguya answers. "That would do it. ...And it's a meaty enough answer that I'll be a woman of my word, and let you be."
She pauses, as she starts to turn. "...It's the opposite for me. Someone protected me for too long. So long that I didn't even get to live most of my life. They didn't trust me to be able to handle it."
"Heh. Here we both are now, hm?"
Kaguya looks to the distance for a moment. "...We'll meet again," she answers. "Count on it. I'll taunt you for some things..."
"But that? That make sense to me." She starts to walk.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
"Hmph. It's only difficult if you're simple of mind," Loren says, trading for apparently blatant insults at this juncture.
He'd never admit it -- not to her, possibly not to anyone -- but there's something enjoyable about being able to be this openly nasty to someone and not have to worry about consequences in any form or shape.
He doesn't like her. She's strange, an enemy, and has unknown and certainly questionable aims.
She's a threat, and if he weren't outright certain this would end with him dead and her walking off undetected, he'd consider it a holy duty to end her here.
But it's still... nice, in a way. If you can call it that.
It's nice to just be hateful without pretense, to stop faking things for once and say what he really feels.
If only a fraction of it.
"The opposite, huh."
Did that explain it?
He'd had a life until it'd been filched from him. She hadn't had one until she'd stolen it for herself... if he's reading her story right.
...Not that he cares. It's none of his business.
"Hmph. It might be," he says at last, gaze still on her. Here they both are, indeed.
"If we meet again," he answers her, "I might have to kill you. We'll almost certainly be enemies." He unfolds his arms, turning palms towards the heavens as if in a sort of a shrug.
"Just so you know."