2021-04-12: Etone One More Time
- Cutscene: Etone One More Time
- Cast: Eika Zuse
- Where: Ethos HQ, St. Heim Papal State
- Date: 2021-04-10
- Summary: Eika decides to fight sin, one more time.
Note: This takes place immediately after Cindered Shadows. When that log goes up I'll edit this link.
Eika Zuse broke away from the rest of the Drifters as the battle ended, as she often did. In this case it was more than her discomfort about being asked questions, though that was part of it. She did not want some of them to ask her about the Etones, not now and possibly not ever. She did not want an Etone that might still be faithful to shoot her for her crimes, real or imagined. It's part of why she'd had to leave Billy, and she hoped that someone else there could treat his wounds. As for hers, she just had to suffer with them for a while.
She also had something to do, and she wasn't sure how long she'd be able to get away with doing it.
Eika may not have ever been in the secret, central command rooms in Ethos Headquarters, but as soon as she broke away and started heading toward her destination, she knew exactly where she was going. Left turn, straight, up a flight of stairs - there was an elevator but she wasn't going to trust it right now - and around a corner that should have a security checkpoint but right now was empty. She slowed down as she went; adrenaline ran out, and she felt her wounds and exhaustion more clearly. But she never let herself stop, though she wanted to do nothing more but rest and think.
And then she was in the Gear garages. Quite a few of the Gears weren't there, which was normal; they didn't even have enough room to keep all the Gears the Ethos owned there at once. But she thought there were more missing than usual, and all the ones piloted by high-ranking Etones. She scanned the enormous room, though; commander Gears weren't what she was looking for.
She found what she was looking for in the wing of the garage where they completely stripped down Gears and rebuilt them. "Oh, what did they do to you..." Eika had to crane her head to look up at the enormous machine. The heavy frame of the Gear - her Gear, before they took it away from her - sat, hunched forward as it always did. It looked complete, though she couldn't tell if something had been removed or altered internally. Even just seeing it again made her feel a little better. Something was finally going right.
Not bothering to roll a ladder over or climb up to the gantry, Eika climbed the back of the hunched-forward Gear. It took her a moment to get the hatch open, but she slid in a moment later, dropping into the cockpit chair.
It felt like home.
Well, not exactly. It was the same, but also different... or, more accurately, she was different. She needed to move the chair, and adjust the straps, and find a way to sit that didn't flatten her tail or drive her claws into the pedals. But despite that it still felt comfortable in a way she hadn't felt for a while.
It was almost enough to cut through her anger. Because Eika was angry. She was angrier than she ever remembered being before, a white fury that she had been trying to restrain. At being persona non grata to the Etones. At Bishop Stone - just Stone, she reminds herself, he'd given any claim to that title up. At the members of Ethos that had gone along with him, at the mysterious organization - Solaris? - that had backed him. At everything she knew, and didn't know; things she could accept and things she couldn't.
Inside the cockpit, Eika screamed. And then, several seconds later, she lowered her forehead to the controls, pressing it against it - and finally let herself break down. She thought she heard someone else in the garage at one point, but - alone, in a deactivated Gear - they must not have noticed her.
Five minutes later, she raised her head, eyes red, realizing the cockpit felt more as she was accustomed to it as her transformation had receded. Her anger hadn't precisely gone with it, but she could handle it, along with her fear and grief and religious doubt. She couldn't afford to keep it here, where she could be found and shot - it was hostile territory. Instead, she felt determination.
Just because half of the Ethos were false, Eika thought, doesn't mean everything else was. There were believers. There was the whole rest of the Church! (And don't think about the fact that the Pope was an Etone, before, some part of her brain nags at her.) The Church did good things. They had done so before, and they would do so again, and the message of Granas was still true and brought hope to the people.
As for her...
She may not have been part of the Ethos anymore, but she still thought of herself as Etone - the atoners of sin. She would handle one sinful Bishop and all his men. She could be the kind of Drifter she'd wanted to be as a kid, one that fought evil. The irony of someone like her fighting against someone else's sin was not lost on her.
And then... she didn't know. Maybe she'd ride off into the sunset. Maybe she'd go to be a Drifter for real, instead of just playing at it; they'd been the only people to accept her, afterwards. Maybe she'd be dead, and it wouldn't matter what she'd planned anyway. She could worry about that then.
"All right," she said to herself, reaching down. She didn't have the key to open the activation systems, but she didn't need it - the Etones had added that to replace the original lock, which had never worked. She struck it just so, popping the hatch open and revealing a small panel beneath. She keyed in the activation codes, prayed that they hadn't changed them yet, and was rewarded with a rumble that she felt in her bones as the engine started up.
"You and me," Eika said, patting the side of her Gear's control panel before pushing the accelerator down. The machine shifted, moving smoothly despite its immense bulk. "You, me, and anyone else who feels the same way. We'll show them sometimes their dupes fight back."