2010-07-08 - La Calisto

BEFORE -- Morgenroete, Onogoro Island

Despite the lingering tensions, morale has been high in Onogoro and the rest of Orb after the destruction of the Federation's military headquarters. Still, at this critical junction, the occupants of Onogoro Island know they must continue to be prepared for any contingency, be ready to defend themselves against anything - even the faintest error could cost them.

Morgenroete is no different. Despite the feeling of jubilation, the staff and security at the mobile suit production facility has been at a high point for the past few weeks - and for understandable reasons. Just as the past few days, no suspicious persons have been seen coming or going from the Morgenroete buildings; no unusual behaviours, and, aside from a minor blip in the security camera footage, no real anomalies.

Yet, despite that, when Princess Cagalli Yula Athha makes her way to her quarters at Morgenroete... she'll be treated to a bouquet of blue irises settled neatly on a table, with a simple card leaning on it. The contents: a ticket, and a message.

Cagalli, I'd like to meet for dinner and catch up on old times. Please meet me at the location on the ticket. And wear something nice.

-Leonard Testarossa

NOW -- The Pacific Chrysalis

One of the most popular and expensive luxury cruiseliners in the world, the Pacific Chrysalis is a ship that has become well known both for the quality of its service and the quality of its workers. One of its primary destinations is the Orb Island mainland; and despite the dangers present, it is there that the ship finds itself tonight. A strict adherence to its schedule is just another thing the Pacific Chrysalis is well known for.

And it is here that Leonard Testarossa finds himself today. Sitting at one of the center tables at one of the Chrysalis' dining halls, he seems to be waiting patiently; a bottle of wine rests on the table as he crosses his legs and settles his hands easily into his lap, leaning back into his chair languidly.

"Sir," one of the waiters speaks up pleasantly. Leonard looks up, and lifts his brow. "Would you like me to take your coat? I assure you, we will keep it in excellent care..."

"No, that's quite alright," Leonard reassures with a cheerful smile, looking toward the entrance of the dining hall. "I might need it.

"Strong-willed women are always particularly dangerous."

"...?"

BEFORE -- Morgenroete, Onogoro Island

Cagalli has been up-and-down, between the recent liberation of her homeland and the equally recent breakup with her boyfriend. Coming back to her quarters to find a bouquet of irises /would/ have been a reason for 'up,' too -- save that when she opens the card, she finds out just who snuck in to leave that particular present.

Nevertheless, it's hard not to be a little curious -- even if she dropped him like a rock when she found out he was possibly a violent lunatic (and has been only further disincentivized from picking him back up by finding out that he may have been two-timing), she /does/ want to find out just why he's so interested now.

The Princess opens her wardrobe with a frown. 'Something nice' always means 'overdressed.'

NOW -- The Pacific Chrysalis

Cagalli has finally found an outfit that looks nice but does not /completely/ cripple her ability to move after about three hours on the phone with Juri and Asagi. As she makes her way to the center of the Chrysalis's dining hall in her long blue dress and matching heels (an arduous process, to be sure, given she can't take more than tiny steps in the damn things), she sweeps her gaze once across the whole area before locking it back on Leonard, moving to sit down across from him.

She very carefully says nothing just yet, save for a short, "Hello." She wants to see just what he's really after first -- she doesn't get calls like this just to catch up, other than from one or two people, neither of whom are Leonard.

"Cagalli," Leonard greets; the smile on his lips is a charming one. "I was starting to get worried you might not show up." The smile on his lips suggests he was not actually worried about that.

The 'older' Testarossa goes silent as he waits for Cagalli to get comfortable. Shifting, he scoots his seat in, as if preparing to devote his full attention to the Princess of Orb -- a fact that is somewhat diverted as he takes the bottle of wine.

"You should try some," he suggests conversationally, as if there had been no change in time since the last time they had met. "Romanee-Conti; apparently from the One Year War. It's a nice reminder that some good things can come out of even the most dangerous times, don't you think?"

Pouring himself a glass, the young man's steel gray eyes lift, his head canting slowly to the side. "The dress was a good choice, but it doesn't really seem to suit you, does it? It seems too restraining." The glass fills up halfway before he offers the bottle towards Cagalli's glass, still smiling. "I've always felt a woman looks her most radiant when she embraces her true nature."

He offers no hints as to the reason for his invitation; instead, he leans back once again, taking his glass delicately as he offers, off-handedly, "I hear you have a sister, now."

Cagalli is dimly familiar with the name of the wine, which is one of the first things that gets her attention -- more to the point, it gets her attention because she's pretty sure a bottle of it rivals a mobile suit sensor suite in cost, especially during times of conflict. She decides, against her better judgment, to let Leonard pour her a glass, nodding as he offers.

"The dress isn't so bad -- it's the heels that I just can't move in," Cagalli remarks, with a little shrug... and then, he decides to press the topic of her sister. Her hand stops halfway to her glass, as she's caught just the littlest bit off guard; eventually, she says, "... yeah. It was -- kind of complicated, before. Family stuff. We're together a lot more now." She gives Leonard a little shrug, trying to play it off as nothing.

Does he know the truth? It wouldn't be surprising, she reflects -- it certainly wouldn't be the only dangerous thing Leonard Testarossa ever knew, if she's to believe Tessa. Finally taking the wine in hand, Cagalli sips at it, wondering briefly if he knows about Pascal, too -- calling no more than two weeks after her breakup... that's a little on the 'too convenient' side, isn't it?

Silver brows give only the faintest of lifts at Cagalli's reaction to his comment. He doesn't stop pouring her wine, though, filling it halfway and then setting the bottle to the side. He says nothing, nor even tries to make a remark on that subtle response. Instead, he simply waits for the answer, as if he had all the time in the world to hear Cagalli's words.

'It was -- kind of complicated, before.'

"Is that so?"

He doesn't ask anything else. Instead, he closes his eyes and smiles, lifting his glass to his lips and sipping. "I'm glad to hear it. Family is important; you should be sure to treasure her, now that she's back." Setting the glass down, his eyes open again, focusing in on Cagalli. There's a faintly amused look in that gaze -- but whatever it's about, he doesn't say anything on.

"I'm sorry if this was a bit of an unorthodox way to ask for a date," he says, his voice still as light as ever. "But you didn't call back, and this seemed like the best way to get your attention." God knows how many months later.

"I wonder why that was?" he lets the question linger, his fingertips resting on the edge of his glass as he focuses his gaze on Cagalli. "I hope I didn't do anything untoward to scare you away. You're an interesting person, after all. It'd be a shame to have done something to drive off a rare woman like you."

"We've been really close since then," Cagalli says, with a small nod. "We do a lot of stuff together... except she's better at a lot of it," she adds, trying to keep the conversation pretty light -- it's easier to avoid the hard questions about Rachel that way, and as Cagalli has learned, a lot of questions are hard when it comes to Rachel.

Unfortunately, the conversation rapidly gets uncomfortable of its own accord. Leonard asks why she stopped calling back. God, where do you even start with a question like that? "Well... to be honest," Cagalli says, trying not to get /too/ uncomfortable as he flatters her and focuses those eyes on her, "It was -- a lot of things."

Deciding not to bring up the fact that he may have been seeing another woman concurrently, she admits, "I heard some kinda -- worrying stuff, from your sister." This might spoil the point about family being so precious. Just a little.

Almost instantly, she regrets telling Leonard the truth, wondering if she's somehow put Tessa in danger... but then again, she's not exactly a great liar. It probably would've come out one way or another.

"She must have been happy to have helped achieve such a large victory for Orb's freedom, too. I'm sure your father would be very proud of both of his daughters."

His voice sounds sincere and perhaps more than a little sympathetic as he takes his glass and lifts it up in a small toast. "Congratulations with that, by the way. I hear you were very frightening in that new gold mobile suit of yours. Hopefully your victory proves to be a decisive one... though I wonder what sort of situation it'll be in when its brought back to square one again? Then again..." Leonard lowers his glass, looking considerate.

"... I guess second chances are for fixing the mistakes that warped something to begin with, aren't they?"

But the question is posed. And as Cagalli grows increasingly uncomfortable, as she answers in a way she regrets... Leonard's lips bloom into the flash of an amused grin. "Don't worry yourself so much -- I'd hardly want you to strain yourself on my account. Though I have to admit, you're much cuter when you're flustered."

Ultimately, his shoulders lift into a shrug. He leans back, hands settling into his lap and head canting vaguely to the left. "Let me guess -- did she tell you that I'm involved with dangerous people? Maybe that I'm unhinged? To be honest, it's a little disappointing to hear something like that from her. We haven't seen each other in so long." A pause follows.

"Not that she's entirely wrong, though. About the former, I mean. But then...

"The same could be said for her, couldn't it?"

Raising her own glass alongside Leonard's, she answers, "I guess I was pretty impressive up there... it was really kinda intimidating to get used to all those new systems so fast, though." She decides that she's better off not elaborating -- some of that is probably sensitive. "And... yeah. To be honest, it's been kinda scary -- some of the Trailers have been talking about setting off bombs under the islands..."

Shaking her head and taking another long drink as Leonard gives her that grin back, she thinks about that last cryptic comment. About midway through that thought process, though, she has to lean hard forward, set her glass down, and screw her lips shut to avoid spit-taking -- did he /really/ just...? "I, uh -- I am not cute when I'm --!!" Cagalli stammers, doing a very poor job of actually refuting it.

Fortunately, he gives her something more concrete to focus on. "I -- guess it could, but, yeah, she said something about that." And her subsequent encounters with a 'friend' of Leonard's who seemed more than a little off-base himself certainly didn't hurt, either. Whatever happened to that boy, anyway...?

She shakes her head, saying, "But -- Tessa's people don't really seem that dangerous. I mean, they blow stuff up, but they're not..." This is about where Cagalli loses the ability to articulate what she's thinking, and so she settles for just repeating, "... /dangerous/."

The laughter that follows Cagalli's fumbling and awkward attempts at denial is good-natured, even casually friendly. The young man hardly looks like anything threatening with his wine glass in one hand and a jovial expression tugging at his features. "I'm -- I'm sorry," he apologizes between his laughter, "it was just too tempting to resist."

What /has/ happened to that boy? Leonard certainly doesn't seem like he's going to answer that particular question tonight, lifting his wine glass to his lips as his laughter fades. He looks a bit more serious as he sets down an empty glass, resting both hands in his lap. "Do you really believe that?" he asks, honestly. "Mithril's," he casually mentions the name, as if they were discussing the weather, "employment is made almost entirely of mercenaries. I understand one of them was one of the most brutal commanders of the Middle East Conflicts -- I don't think I need to tell you what it means to be known as 'brutal' during a war like that. Another has taken more than twice the lives of some of the most notorious serial killers. Can you say that's not dangerous?"

Leonard heaves a sigh as he moves to take the wine bottle; his smile seems a bit more exhasperated as it tugs at his lips, his right brow lifting questioningly. "But that's not entirely why they're dangerous. They're pursuing ends they have no idea how to accomplish, and making enemies of organizations they're not equipped to overcome. Tessa is taking a casual walk towards a noose they're personally tying for her."

A long pause follows. Leonard expression softens, and he looks apologetic as he -- very helpfully, and perhaps forbodingly -- offers up the bottle to refill Cagalli's drink.

"Actually, I'm afraid I didn't just invite you here to enjoy your company, as tempting as it was," he explains. "I'd like to ask you a favor."

Cagalli chews at her lip a little as Leonard lays out his case. It's weird to think about -- Cagalli's so used to thinking of Mithril as Tessa's occasionally bizarre party of do-gooders that she hadn't really considered their pasts. ... then again, the Red Comet is leading the AEUG, and Rachel is... a complicated woman, to say the least. Does the past really matter so much?

Letting Leonard refill her drink, Cagalli just lets Leonard keep talking -- as she kind of suspected, he wanted something more than a polite personal call. (Thank God it wasn't something... /much/ more than a polite personal call, though.) When he admits to it, she says, "... yeah, I figured," with a small nod. No one ever calls her just to talk.

"I guess this is about your sister, then?" she asks, getting a vague sense of where this is going. He wouldn't have pointed out just how dangerous Mithril's -- and Tessa's -- goals are if he didn't want something to do with her, would he?

The past matters more than anyone might ever know.

Letting his hand rest at the base of his wine glass, Leonard waits to let his words sink in. "I suppose you figured out I had ulterior motives before we got here," he says, slyly.

"It's unfortunate -- I would have liked to have met under happier circumstances. Maybe next time." The way he says it, it sounds more like a promise than a suggestion.

"You're close friends with Tessa. She's never had many friends -- and she'd trust the words of someone who's managed to make a connection to her more than her unhinged older brother who associates with dangerous people." Leaning back, he looks at Cagalli evenly -- even though his voice is joking, his gaze is unusually serious.

"I'd like you to ask her to resign from her position in Mithril and cut her associations with Katharon. If you could convince her to let me shelter her somewhere safe, it would be perfect.

"But I'm willing to compromise."

The request comes as something of a shock to Cagalli -- she hadn't expected him to be that... direct. He wants her to stop fighting? That's... not entirely what she'd expected, but it almost seems too simple. Too -- nice, even.

It seems fishy. "... I don't think she'll go for it," Cagalil says, shaking her head. "I mean -- I'll talk to her, I guess..." Though it may not be about what Leonard hopes she will. "But -- don't get your hopes up, OK? She... this is really important to her."

Downing the rest of her glass of wine as she begins to sense the conversation is about to sour a little, she says, "I... guess I can try, though." She glances to either side for a moment before returning her gaze to Leonard, asking, "... just what happened between you two, anyway?" with her characteristic complete lack of things like 'tact' or 'restraint.'

It is fishy. And given Leonard's general behavior, it's easy to be suspicious of it. He offers no attempt to reinforce his sincerity -- especially as his posture and his expression shift seamlessly back to something more relaxed, more carefree -- and significantly uncommitted. "That's all I'd ask of you," he asserts easily.

Still, though, as Cagalli presses her questions, Leonard looks to the right -- out toward the view of the dark sky beyond, the waters on the horizon glistening against the light of the Chrysalis. "I wonder if it's more important than her life?" he asks, conversationally. "Because that's not what she's risking by keeping herself down this path -- it's what she's offering up on a pedestal." He looks wistful, his shoulders coming up in a helpless shrug.

"But I guess she was always the type to overcommit."

'... just what happened between you two, anyway?'

The question draws a sudden halt to the conversation. Leonard, still looking out at the sea, says nothing. It might be debatable if he even heard Cagalli, as he takes his glass of wine and drains a simple, easygoing sip from the deep red confines. "... I like you, Cagalli. I hope you believe that. That straightforward, unthinking dive into the unknown with a bold spirit is inspiring. Dignified, but unsubtle. Gracious, but stubborn. You really are the spitting image of royalty."

He sets his glass down, and, having completely failed to answer the question, he adds, "Next time, you really should call me back."

The Princess is very glad that she's finished her wine, because when Leonard follows up that unsettling comment with /entirely/ too much flattery, she turns /beet/ red and hastily sets down her glass. "I -- uh -- god, you don't need to --" she stammers, ending up coming up entirely too short on words. "God, quit that!!"

She can only remain flustered for so long, though; the atmosphere's a little too heavy for that. "I, uh -- I guess I should take a look around the ship, before we hit port," she says, a little uneasy. "I'll talk to her, though -- I mean, I'll try." She may not try very hard, of course, or even really try so much as just say what Leonard said... but it's better than blowing him off, isn't it?

Standing up, she says, "I'll, uh -- I'll think about it. I..." ... /was/ seeing someone -- but then, they broke up, didn't they? "I hope next time we don't have to talk about anything this heavy."

"It really is too easy to fluster you, you know," the 'older' Testarossa remarks pleasantly, lifting up his glass in a more teasing toast. "I think I'll always appreciate that."

Still, when Cagalli stands up, the young man follows proper etiquette; the very image of a gentleman, the silver-haired youth stands up as Cagalli does, his head bowing in a respectful nod. "Thank you, Cagalli. You're a reliable woman." As he speaks, he picks up his coat, sliding it on leisurely -- and then slowly sliping his hand inside to fish through the interior pockets.

"You really should take the time to enjoy the full cruise sometime; there's no leisure cruiseliner on Earth that can rival the Pacific Chrysalis. And I hear the captain is quite remarkable, too. But it's rather expensive... here..." Still fishing through his coat, he finally pulls something free -- several tickets, all of them for the Chrysalis, offered up to Cagalli. "Take your friends sometime. You deserve some celebration, don't you? Consider this my way of congratulating you for all your accomplishments so far."

Hands slipping inside his coat, Leonard allows himself an amused smile at Cagalli's words. As he walks away, he lifts a hand into the air.

"The next time we'll have much more fun, I think."

Cagalli, evidently, has not learned to be cautious of candy from strangers; she accepts the tickets to the Chrysalis, saying, "... jeez, thanks -- I don't even know who all to take, but..." She's sure she can figure something out. Tessa, for sure. Rachel, for sure. Rangda... probably -- though it might be weird to bring her with what are otherwise largely 'work friends.' ... she'll think of something.

Realizing too late that her dress has no pockets and anything one could call a 'bag' has been left elsewhere, Cagalli frowns for a moment. She's going to have to carry these for a while, it seems. "... yeah. I, uh -- thanks, Leonard. I'll see you around, OK?"

From there, she decides to retreat, lest this already uncomfortably pleasant moment get /more/ uncomfortably pleasant. ... well, that or lest Leonard try to fluster her again, after a comment like /that/.

And so, Leonard walks away. He strides out of the dining hall, past the Chrysalis' casinos; two exceptionally large figures dressed in rough, concealing jackets stand at the slot machines he passes; jackpot signs flash and coins stream from one's machine, and yet the large man(?) ambivalently detaches itself from the machine the second Leonard walks by. The young Whispered says nothing as they almost casually follow after him, lumbering like some sort of twin Hulks.

"Did you enjoy yourselves?" he asks in a way that seems to suggest the answer doesn't really matter.

"ROGER," echoes a tinny voice from the left. "CORRESPONDANCE B5: COMPLETED."

"Oh, good," he answers.

"And here I was worried."