2010-5-09 - Catching Up



TWO YEARS AGO OUTER SPACE

There is a concert in space, and everyone is dancing. They are not so much doing 'the moonwalk' or listening to 'Spaceman' though as enjoying the debut of Lacus Clyne, before she became dark queen of the haros and/or gained a couple cup sizes. Well, most people are enjoying it, anyway.

Ryoto Hikawa is swaying like a drunk and wandering through the crowd of revelers, experiencing what it feels like to be Lost in Space. After spending ten minutes doing this and realising that it's entirely possible that Leo Stenbuck, the person he was attending this with and hoping he could open up to a little more, has probably departed without him, leaving him cold, alone and broke on a free-floating metal cylinder spinning around a huge blue rock.

He is sobbing.

NOW STILL OUTER SPACE

"You know, it's strange," Ryoto Hikawa says to one of his accompanying science dogsbodies. "I remember this ship pretty well. Did most of my training on it. Never thought I'd be back here, though! Funny how that sort of thing works out, isn't it?" "If you say so, sir."

Ryoto and Jeeves arrived on a space ship filled with robots, guns and money, as TLI is shipping its current load of 'please try not to destroy these 007' Lions, MP Huckebeins and Rectangular Launchers amongst other things up to the Excelion for you to use when you feel like an all-Lion brawl. He is looking pretty chipper!

The EFS Shirogane has been making a lot of stops in the Exelion lately. It's weird, but Leo Stenbuck can't really say he minds. The Space Noah-class is respectable in size, but it's by no means enormous, and for having grown up on a space colony it is pretty easy for Leo to get a little stir crazy when seeing the exact same thing day in and day out.

So he's taking the opportunity, as he often does, to wander around the Exelion. Normally, probably in part thanks to the size of the Exelion, very little of interest actually happens... which Leo actually prefers, especially with how hectic and awful things have been lately. Today, well...

A door in the wall near Ryoto and Jeeves zips open, and Leo Stenbuck strolls through, in his A-LAWS Casual of 'a uniform, but without the greatcoat and duster, and instead only a teal, A-LAWS branded tanktop', which does a great job of emphasizing that since Ryoto saw him last, Leo has gained four inches and forty pounds (all of it muscle) and has transformed from a skinny kid into a male model.

His hands are stuffed into the pockets of his uniform pants, and he's humming something... which stops when he sees Ryoto, and stumbles to a halt. It may be a little unkind, but in his shock, the first thing he thinks to blurt out is, "Don't tell me /you're/ signing up?"

Headtilt.

Hey, thinks Ryoto after a moment of trying to remember the face.

"Leo, right? Hey!" he says, smiling a little. He begins to walk over.

"To A-LAWS, you mean?" he asks, digging his hands into his pockets as he goes. "I... well, actually I tried a while ago, but people recommended I stay where I was. It's probably for the best, actually, considering I dah... well, it's been about a year since I..."

Stop, stop for a moment, Ryoto. Actually think words out before saying them. "Piloted, that's the word. I haven't piloted in a while. Haven't done very much public-face-wise in a while, actually. Haven't seen you for a while. It must have been two years ago I invited you to see the Armorlion, right?"

There is a brief moment of something vaguely resembling panic across Leo's face as he realizes that by saying anything at all, he has accidentally initiated a conversation. He glances back and forth a few times, desperate for some way to escape, but eventually is forced to admit his defeat and begrudgingly reaches up to press two fingers into his neck and turn off his music.

"Uh... yeah," the young man confirms, lowering his hand and crossing his arms over his chest. "Long time no see. How'd that... work out for you? The Lion, I mean. Ever get cleared for mass production?"

"The 'Lion didn't, but I was able to create a very good variant of the Huckebein for mass production. We're just bringing some up now, in fact. No black hole engine or anything like that, obviously, but we're hoping they'll be a step up from the Gespenst..."

Ryoto gestures with a tilt of his head to the distance, where some of the teal and black not-GMs can be seen in the process of being unloaded. They lack the forehead Vs, curved armor or the gravity manipulation vanes of the originals, but they are recogniseably Huckebeiny. Many of them have the rectangular launchers mounted, unloaded, on their backs already.

"I made them myself!" he says, sounding unashamedly- but not gloatingly- proud. Just the happy enthusiasm of an artist pointing out his first painting on a wall. "That's pretty much what I was doing all this time in Mao Industries, working on mechs. How have you been? What have you been doing since I saw you?"

When prompted, Leo's eyes slip past Ryoto to the distant MP Huckebeins. He has to admit, they look pretty good... but he's certainly not going to admit that to Ryoto, of all people. "They're alright," he says noncommitally, with a shrug.

As for what he's been doing... a grimace flashes across Leo's face as he reflects on the past, like, year. A whole lot has happened, and he can't even begin to think of how he'd summarize it... or /why/ he would, not to this little-

"Well, there was that time my girlfriend died," he blurts without actually willing himself to, venom surging into his voice. "Or that time one of my squadmates went MIA and then turned up dead, and now another one's missing, and-" Leo snaps his mouth shut on the rest of his word bile before things get weird, and averts his gaze out of a mixture of embarrassment and sudden, irrational anger.

"They were right. You're happier where you are," he sneers at the ground.

"..."

Wow, this got awkward all of a sudden. Ryoto freezes up, and all of a sudden his previous candour seems to evaporate, leaving the man of two years ago there instead. He clutches the hem of his pockets suddenly.

"Oh..." is all he manages to get out at first, a feeling of guilt beginning to well up. "Leo, I'm so sorry... I..."

Ryoto leans backwards onto a wall, and crosses his arms loosely. "I'm sorry," he says, looking at the floor for a moment. "Coming in here sounding like I'm on top of the world, and--"

It's been difficult, he realises, to relate to the outside world. He has indeed been in the 'tank' as it were for so long that what's been going on beyond the walls of laboratories has really fled him. He shakes his head a little. "Are you... coping?"

"Don't apologize," Leo snaps, venting another jet of irrational anger. "It isn't your fault, and I don't need your pity." The young man turns away and unfolds his arms to reach up and tighten the strip of white cloth tied around his head.

"I'll live," he says bluntly, after a few beats. "I don't have any other choice." Another few beats, and he continues, "Like I said, you're happier where you are. You're too soft to be a combat pilot."

"I am," Ryoto replies.

"I couldn't really do anything when Mao industries was taken over way back when," he says. It's not a smart idea saying this, but from what he remembers of Leo it might--

"Even though I could fight by myself pretty well. I was pretty much hiding in a closet welding together a box of scraps most of that time."

"I'm trying... to do what I can to help out all the friends I made back in the beginning," he says, somewhat unsteadily. "Since they helped me. Now I'm making new machines to help obtain leverage against the new shadow-mirror designs, and... I wanted to get back in contact with everyone, like Tasuku and Alia and Latooni. I might even end up working on bringing the Fairlion out of prototypes..."

"I-if there's anything like that I could help you with, too, I-"

"I don't need your help!" Leo snarls, snapping his eyes back up to Ryoto; it has a particular edge to it, as if Ryoto had somehow found an especially raw nerve... which becomes more apparent when Leo continues, "Just because I'm not some kind of autistic nerd genius doesn't mean I don't know what I'm doing!"

Rather than expound on that little outburst, Leo huffs, and sneers, "If you can help, great. Try to make a mass production model of something without making it a deathtrap and you'll have done the world a giant fuckin' favor, but /I/ don't need /anything/ from you. Got it?"

"...well, ok."

Ryoto's deflated quite a bit. He briefly considers what Leo meant, still trying to find some measure of constructive idea in the vitriol, and... files it away for later.

A few moments pass in awkward silence again.

"...how's the Excelion?" Ryoto asks, trying to find something to change the subject to. "I heard the Top Squadron is, ah, working with you in A-LAWS now too, I think I remember some of them... there's Noriko, and..."

Leo is perfectly fine with awkward silence; in fact, he's almost disappointed when Ryoto speaks again, to ask about the Top Squadron. "They're the 'Fraternity Unit' now," Leo explains gruffly, crossing his arms over his chest again. "And they're all crazy bitches. The Exelion..."

Leo grimaces and turns back and forth to survey the pairs' immediate surroundings. "... it's alright, I guess. I'm stationed somewhere else, I'm just here on a stopover."

The trick here is he hasn't actually learned yet that Leo would probably like nothing less than to get away from him, and is instead trying to hold up a reasonable conversation with an old friend who has recently seen tragedy.

"Oh, another ship?" Ryoto asks. "I... can't remember where I'm supposed to be, I think I'm attached to the Hiryu as part of the technical crew sort of... do you get on well there, at least?"

Ryoto would hate it if Leo didn't have any friends or people he knew well considering what he's said. He's rapidly running out of nice things to talk about though.

"I'm the CAG," Leo says, as if that explains everything. After a beat, realization dawns, and he explains further, using a sort of vaguely condescending tone, as if he were talking to a civilian, or possibly a mentally disabled person. "That's the Commander, Air Group. I'm in charge of all the MS teams on the ship."

"So that's... ... pretty cool," he summarizes, with a shrug. At least he's capable of friendly chat, even if he is kind of a dick about it. It's just... a little like navigating a minefield; step on a raw nerve and he flips over to outrage at the drop of a hat.

Also, the minefield hates you.

"Oh wow, that is good," Ryoto says. "I'm glad about that."

He doesn't really worry about Leo's tone, as he expects it. Words form for a moment as he considers what he's going to say next, still not entirely sure how he hit a nerve before, and still somewhat wary of doing it again. 'I'm sure she'd be proud of you for that' is probably not the right statement, for example, especially considering he doesn't know who 'she' is and /asking/ is beyond consideration.

"You know, I always thought you'd probably end up doing something like that," he finally settles on saying. He... thinks.

"Even though you were rough to me when we were younger, I got the feeling you'd really be able to go places."

Well, that's... unexpected. So much so, in fact, that Leo isn't quite sure what to say to it. His kneejerk response is something along the lines of 'I got the feeling you were an asshole', but that seems somehow inappropriate now. It's hard to dislike someone when they're being nice to you... and Leo is definitely sure he's supposed to dislike Ryoto, even if he can't really remember why. Maybe it's just his stupid face.

"'Younger'," he settles on snorting after a few moments of awkward silence. "It makes us sound like old men, when you say it like that." Another bit of silence, and then Leo mutters, begrudgingly, "Thanks, though. It's cool your... science... shit is going alright."

"Sorry," Ryoto says, trying not to laugh at himself. "I just feel like I've really grown up quite a lot in a short time. So yeah... I kind of look at things even a few years ago as like that. I huh..."

Well, hey, it's been a while, he might as well say it. "You were cool. You were really confident and self-assured, in a way that I couldn't be. You were... bold, and stuff. And you had attitude."

"I probably sound so silly. Anyway, I get the feeling I probably stopped you on your way to somewhere? So I won't keep you any longer."

Ryoto's compliments have basically thrown Leo's entire worldview into confusion. For several moments, he just stands there, blinking rapidly in a mixture of confusion and shock... and then he blurts, "Uh, yeah, I was going to- yeah." He takes a step backwards and unfolds his arms again, scratching vigorously at the back of his neck.

"So, uh- yeah," he repeats. "It- I should go. It was... cool seeing you, I guess. Uh... bye." And, with that final declaration, Leo whirls and rushes back through the door he came from. Why is Ryoto being so... so... /that?/ It doesn't compute! IT DOESN'T COMPUTE!!