2021-06-13: Echoes
- Log: Echoes
- Cast: Elhaym van Houten, Citan Uzuki, Queen Zephyr
- Where: Shevat Gear Hangar
- Date: June 13, 2021
- Summary: Queen Zephyr had mentioned in the prior meeting that there was something she wanted to show Elly in the Gear hangar. But...
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
Elly had a wonderful, wonderful afternoon with the Queen. It was like -- not a storybook, exactly, but that's only because Elly did not have storybooks as a child. It *is* like a story, though, and Elly did hear stories from people and screens alike.
But now it is after the magic.
"I admit I'm not sure what it is that I'm examining, Doctor Uzuki," Elly says as the lift enters the Gear Hangar space - the one on the northwest side, the area that is mostly used for storage now, already partially crowded with dozered-over wreckage from the Odessa attack.
Elly's arms are folded. She is faintly anxious, above her baseline. It is not unusual for when she is alone. Citan has had ample opportunity to see Elly both alone and with Fei at this point, and there is a certain low-grade tension which mostly disappears in her when she is fully engaged in an activity, or in the immediate company of a loved one (primarily Fei, though Emeralda, Riesenlied, Leon and Lily - in approximately that order - have a similar effect).
"Queen Zephyr was a little... vague about it. It isn't unlocking Vierge's computer or anything, is it?" she asks. "I don't know all of the engineering but if the AERODs can be installed on one of Shevat's Gears, I'll do whatever I can... I imagine Hammer would be better qualified, though..."
The lift reaches the floor, near the panelled-up space - marked only with navigation/sector codes - that contains...
... Elly looks away. "This is actually close to where Emeralda had Crescens, though I see it's been moved nearer to the main entrance. It's strange to think about."
<Pose Tracker> Citan Uzuki has posed.
It had been chance, it seemed, that Elly had encountered the doctor. He had similarly been heading below for the hangar, apparently to check up on the repairs on Heimdall. The encounter with Maria had been a dangerous one for many of them, his own Gear included. But unlike Elly's, his own had been more or less salvagable.
"I suppose that we will see. The Queen would not ask that you go to see for yourself for no particular reason. Indeed, given what you have told me of your meeting with her..."
He readjusts his glasses, glancing over at her for just the moment. It's some testament to Elly's nature that this is how she is when she is 'on her own', but that this tension of hers vanishes completely when she is around those she trusts and loves...
Or when she is completely disengaged from her own ego, in a sense. Call it whatever you want: a step away from the default mode network, flow state -- the outcome is the same in presenting the world with a young woman who simple is, without any anxiety or hesitation.
It is not uncommon to see, people being people. But the particulars of Elly's capabilities -- to say nothing of her potential capacity -- make this a rather interesting thing to consider.
"...I have heard that 'back in the day', there had been more Shevites who had the ability to use Ether. But, this was before the Day of Collapse and that sort of person is as rare today as they are most places in Filgaia. It may be possible to install them within a Shevite Gear, but if the way you have recounted this to me is true, then I think it is something she might want you to see rather than... ah, but we should not discount that, either."
He follows her out, pausing a moment to take in the debris remaining from the attack. "Goodness, it seems it had been quite the battle!" the doctor remarks. "Now then... where had the Queen said you should head? We may have to flag down one of the engineers..."
Crescens was moved? "I wonder why." Citan's own gaze has turned off in a different direction -- perhaps he's searching for where Heimdall ended up. Some of these sections are sealed off, with no sign that they can be opened but for a console.
Is it possible that there are Gears here that have rested unused for some time without anyone to pilot them? Or are these sealed sections merely empty?
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
"We're in the right area," Elly says, looking around. "It's just funny... because..."
Elly breathes out. "Well, it's not actually funny," she says. "It's just strange. We fought Josie here. She made us fight her. I..."
Elly walks over towards one of the spaces, seeming to know exactly where she's going... and she stops, right next to a sort of double-starburst black scuff mark on the ground. Elly looks over towards Citan, spreading her arms. "Right here," she says. "I was standing right here when she was really unloading at me and I had to use Ether to block the shells--"
The same Ether that people in Shevat are having trouble using.
"... Is it just rarer? I suppose if there's one advantage in Solaris, it's that Ether's so common... they can train almost everyone in the Gebler forces in various techniques, but knowing it at all is precious..."
"When do you think people first became able to use that?" Elly asks Citan, but --
Ah, the prompt. "Um! It was... block 47. Which..."
Elly turns. "... Oh! It was right here."
Elly seems a lot tenser, now. She walks forwards, towards the floor console, which is sitting next to an eight-light ready-alert signal. The lowest light is more or less impossible to discern as 'lit', although it is -
And the light right above it, much fresher, flicks on as Elly gets nearer. Elly stops.
(Heimdall can be made out, much closer to the main launch doors. Citan can estimate it's either in dock #14 or #15, depending on the exact layout... anyway, that's one Great Joe Mystery solved. Maybe they consolidated everything for swifter launches... or because of all the detritus they had to move over to this sector for the moment.)
"... Did someone leave a Gear active in there?" Elly asks.
<Pose Tracker> Citan Uzuki has posed.
"Hmm, I see. That would explain some of the... damage here," Citan remarks, gazing at the very scuffmark Elly approaches. "It does resemble your technique."
But.
There's something different about the mark it left on the floor. As if she had... somehow exceeded...
He rubs at his chin as if in deep thought, frowning faintly.
"...Hmm? Well, evidence would suggest as such. That, and those who have the ability can receive training, too. Those of the surface rarely have the opportunity to learn from another and must teach themselves. ...In that, I, myself, have also been fortunate." He pauses for a moment. "I cannot be certain. If we are to judge by Emeralda, however... perhaps at least as far back as the Zeboim era. ...Though, she may not be the best of examples..."
Block 47, was it--
And it was right here.
The light on the console is just barely lit.
Citan can see -- and matters such as the apparent location of his own Gear soon fall by the wayside when it happens -- the light on the console brighten.
"What...? A reaction like that...?" he utters, gaze moving between the door and Elly alike.
"I have ordered that they release the lock," says a familiar voice from a short distance behind the both of them.
"Now, I would like you to see what is inside," says Zephyr, Queen of Shevat. She is flanked by a pair of white-clade Shevite warriors who stand at parade rest, but is otherwise alone.
The dock begins to open, slowly.
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
The topic of the Ether and its possible presence - simply uneducated - would give Elly a wonderful idea, a possibility, another fun thing to work with, to work towards, something that she (and Emeralda, perhaps, and Fei, and and and) could spread out -
Yeah, that thought of an Ether school.
That thought is sitting on the shelf.
Because there is something much closer. Elly looks towards the Queen. Anxiety is spiking for a moment. She laughs, folding her arms.
Internally Elly feels something gnawing, an enormous moving shadow, a blank spot. The gates begin to open, slowly, and Elly looks over her shoulder at -
- The Gear is tall, sleek. It seems impossibly simple - perfect, with no flaw discernible in its white plates, in the magenta cowling around its upper body and hips and the long trailing triangular form behind its head. It stands with its arms gently set back, attached to standard support mounts-- no, not quite standard; they don't look like the equipment in the other Gear hangars.
The air that flows out has the scent of a tomb. Elly covers her mouth with one arm and coughs.
The quasi-vital ceramic covering of the Gear shines, uncertainly, in the light of the hangar itself. Its graceful, almost birdlike head faces forwards without visible camera points. Unless that's the yellow patch atop the 'forehead'?
"... I've never seen one like this," Elly says, astonished. "What...?"
The console lights steadily increment upwards now that the lock is unsealed. Amber fills, then green. At the seventh light there is a warning pin-pon chime, slightly thickened by the passage of centuries.
Elly looks down at the Queen, then towards Citan - back up at the Gear - then back to them. "Whose is it?" Elly asks.
<Pose Tracker> Citan Uzuki has posed.
The Gear that rested within this hangar is none other than...
Citan gazes upon it with no mild amount of shock. A moment more and he's turned towards Zephyr.
"Your majesty, is this...?"
"An Omnigear. Yes, this is a Gear that surpasses all other Gears. A legendary Gear. It has slumbered here for the past five hundred years," Zephyr explains, gazing upon the form of the long-sealed Gear with an impassive expression. "And now, in your presence, it has awoken once again. Please understand, not just anyone can use a Gear such as this. They will only perform for the correct person, much like certain ARMs..."
Citan is silent again, turning his head to look back up at it, at a form that seems just about perfect, as if it had been 'born' rather than assembled by human hands.
"I had to witness this for myself. After the invasion, I had heard that it had reacted... and one of the engineers had seen it happen."
Zephyr gazes at Elly and Elly alone.
"Once... it had belonged to Sophia."
She pauses, for a long, lingering moment. It's hard to read what emotion there passes on her face: sorrow? Regret? Perhaps even a sort of muted longing.
"Now it wishes to become yours."
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
A gear that surpasses all other gears.
A legendary gear.
Slumbering here.
and now it wishes to become Yours.
Elly stares up at it and she breathes swiftly and her heart pounds and she swallows several times, dryly, before saying in a slightly curdling voice, as if she's about to cry, "I don't --"
Her eyes look at Zephyr then, panic in them, as well as tears, as well as a growing feeling of *shame* which is making her face turn red. "I, I can't just - This kind of a, a machine -"
She's hugging herself more tightly. She wants to run from the hangar.
"It has to be, be a mistake or something, I'm not - I can't live up to -" Why did I SAY that? Elly thinks, before she just sticks her thumb's second joint in her mouth and bites down. The pain, the oral activity, the fact that she's DOING something rather than just thrashing, provide a measure of calm...
Elly stares at the floor. Deep breath. Force it out. Deep breath again. Let it out.
"... Now that, it 'woke up', at least, someone else can use it, right?" Elly says, looking at Citan and *not* at the Omnigear. "Maria! Oh, or - Xantia, or Leon, I'm sure any of them would be glad to!" Elly tries to smile at Citan but this time it really does not work at all.
At some point during this the cockpit block irised open with smooth silence, not even the subtle crisp machine-sounds of a Gebler Gear in perfect repair. From this angle, of course, you can't see inside.
<Pose Tracker> Citan Uzuki has posed.
There is surprise of a sort, if minutely, on the face of the queen. But it's joined too with a sort of realization.
And wash of bittersweet understanding.
She doesn't say a word immediately, watching, waiting, permitting Elly the time she needs to surmount the initial panic and array herself before her.
Citan's expression, when Elly looks his way -- asking him if someone, anyone, could accept and use this Gear -- is downright apologetic. "No... that is not possible. Only those who are the 'correct candidate' can use an Omnigear... if it were to be anyone, it would have to be you, Elly."
Perhaps there might somehow be one other person in all of Filgaia who might meet the silent qualifications the Gear requires. But even that event would be highly, improbably unlikely. No, without question, the only one who can use this Gear is...
"He is correct," says Zephyr, looking up at the Gear that even now seems to almost invite Elly to use it. "Perhaps this is fate," she muses, closing her eyes briefly. "...But I will not force you to claim it, Elhaym. It will remain here. Should you choose to use it, or leave it here, that is your decision to make."
Almost, looking at the Gear now, looking at the young woman before it...
Almost, it could be five hundred years ago, once again.
It has been a very long time.
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
Citan explains that *only she* can do this...
He can see the hope and possible relief drain out of Elly's face.
This is not a typical reaction. Indeed, Elly usually has herself on a pretty firm leash, every inch the proper young woman even if she has let her hair down to a real extent, to suit the rougher people among whom she dwells. She has rarely been rude, save by accident; she has only raised her voice in alarm or shock.
So why does she look like she's panicking?
The answer is inside of the back of Elly's head.
What she had heard from Zephyr had relieved her profoundly, not so long ago. If 'Lacan' was still alive - if that half-recalled, half-referenced person of the ancient times was in fact extant - then it meant that...
It meant that all of this was some kind of strange, perhaps novel experience. Ether reactions. The Memory Cube. Maybe something emerging from the Ley. A side effect of the Metal Demon technology, which they now understand more, which they use as a daily thing, which they do not even call by those names any more.
It meant that there was something in the back of her head that had been disproved.
The Queen speaks to her with charity and concern. Elly answers her, with an ashen face, "Thank you - your highness - I -"
A feeling comes upon her; a feeling that she has felt before, when she guarded Fei against Siegfried and broke a limitation that would have, in its own right, likely paved her way into the ranks of the Elements, mishaps and misadventures and tears or not.
A feeling she has felt several times afterwards. In times of uttermost desperation. A sense of determination. A sense that she can do anything. That she will try again and again, and again, and again; no matter how long it takes.
Elly is looking at Citan but for a moment she feels as if she's looking in the mirror, as if she's looking at her own face and it's a beacon of encouragement and care and she is forming words with her lips, that say a sentence that you could translate accurately as, "This time - for sure!"
In her soul Elly screams. In the external and phenomenal world, she tilts her head down and, clasping her head in both hands, suddenly and with great force runs - runs away from the Omnigear, away from Citan, away from Zephyr and her escort. She runs into the lift hard enough to smash against the side and jams her fingers on the controls.
A LITTLE WHILE LATER:
"Are chu alright?"
Elly's eyes come back into focus. She's sprawled out on the turf. Two Chu-Chus are looking at her with some concern. One of them proffers a damp cloth, pap-papping it on her forehead.
"I'm sorry, to - make you worry -"
"Was someone chasing chu?" "Chu really shouldn't run in the corridors."
"No," Elly says, "I - nobody was chasing me, I just... was running."
She is not, entirely, sure that it is the truth.