2010-08-06 - Part 2: The New Girl

Argama - Recreation Center

Time to get physical, physical. I wanna get physical. There is a rusty exercycle turned upside down in one corner of this padded zero-g gymnasium. Strange future sports equipment is strewn haphazardly about the dojo, like padded battle batons and tridents. A long row of low gravity treadmills line one wall, with elaborate straps to keep a runner in place while he gets a good workout and keeps the flab from mess hall hamburgers off.

Once again, the blue/blonde-haired pilot is working out some frustrations in the gym, attacking a punching bag in zero-G with a barrage of heavy, furious punches and kicks, spinning herself around for momentum each time, and rebounding off the floor or ceiling if she manages to drift off.

What's noticible is that she's still in her black flightsuit and mask, evidently not minding she's probably working up a crazy sweart in them. Pausing for a moment, she reaches for a bottle of water and, opening the cap, takes a deep swig.

Amuro is making the rounds following his return from MIA. He spoke to Bright-- thus the shiner he's sporting. He caught up with Rachel, and now he's on his way to find Quattro (that bastard). On his way, he has to pass through the crew quarters. On his way through /there/, he hears the telltale sounds of an angry person punching something.

Interest piqued, he makes his way towards the rec centre. There are some pretty raw emotions flooding out of the room, but it's nothing too serious-- as far as he can tell just from an empathic footprint, at least.

He pauses in the doorway, one hand anchoring himself to the frame, feet lightly touching down on the ground. The Newtype watches the younger pilot (she's clearly a pilot in that getup) for a moment, waiting for her to take a break. When she finally does, he drifts inside. "Hey," he calls out. "You should probably, uh, not exercise in a normal suit..." Amuro frowns. "I mean, there's, there's /good/ sweating and, uh, bad sweating."

Empathic footprint... Kati looks to Amuro, and for a moment, she winces, rubbing her head. Raw emotion, confution, curiousity, annoyance, and a bit of tiredness come rolling off Kati, as she rubs her head. Then, once her headache stops, she takes a second look at Amuro, and then it finally clicks. She quickly pulls the staw out of her mouth, and comes to attention, still drifting slightly. "Sir, I... I prefer wearing this outfit." she replies, but then snaps out of it.

Touching down onto the floor, she takes a deep breath, and manages to ask... "You're... Amuro Ray, aren't you?"

"Yeah, that's... that's me," Amuro replies, touching down as well. Magnets in his shoes keep him on the floor without binding him too strongly; it's an old astronaut trick.

"So, uh... I guess you're new?" he asks, reaching back through his memories. He vaguely recalls a personnel file, but, well, he never reads that stuff. That's Bright's job, or Quattro's (that bastard). Either way, here he is, and here she is, and here they are. He does remember one thing, at least.

"So you're the pilot of the new Gundam?"

Part 2: The New Girl

The masked pilot nods. "Kati Burn. I... suppose I am, sir." she replies with a note of reluctance. "It would be more honest to say that I stole it, and there's no other pilots to use it."

She takes another sip of her bottle, and says, "I suppose that's common situation, here, isn't it?"

Amuro looks briefly sheepish, like a little boy caught in a lie. It passes quickly, leaving his war-torn visage in its wake. "Uh, I guess I kind of... started a trend there," he admits. "So I can't really hold it against anyone. I, uh, try not to be a hypocrite."

With a click-snap of his heel, he drifts over to the wall and leans against it, eyeing Kati. "You don't have to call me sir. I don't really have a rank in the AEUG right now. I'm, I guess, the... the Karaba liaison? I don't know. We play it pretty loose around here." A brief smile. "The only hard and fast rule is that Bright's in charge. Never forget that." He points at the fresh black eye. "It'll cost you."

Kati regards Amuro's black eye with a note of concern, but she nods. "I... learned a lot about you. Your combat record, most of all." she states, somewhat emberassed. "It's not suprising. There weren't many other examples to study. Regardless, it... Is an honour to meet you, sir."

Amuro does his best to wave off the flattery. "Yeah, I killed a lot of people in the War. Not something I like to brag about," he explains. "Pleasure to meet you too."

"So, what brings you to the AEUG?" he asks, growing curious. "I read something about A-LAWS and this new Gundam, but I'm fuzzy on the details. Mind if I ask what they did to you?"

The girl frowns at this, and crosses her arms defensively. "I don't remember." is all she says, but the way her mood switches to doubt, uncertainty, and fear suggest the truth isn't as simple...

"If you've read the report, that's all there is to it. I... remember waking up in an unfamiliar medical facility, heavily guarded. Something was... Wrong, so I escaped. I don't know how long I was evading persuit, but I eventually managed to find a Mobile Suit hanger, as well as an old prototype suit that was being stored there. I powered it up, and escaped, but... Something... I don't know." She rubs one of her temples, the effort of trying to remember the events being almost painful. "The next I knew, I woke up in a locked cabin on the Argama."

It doesn't take a psychic-- or even an empath-- to tell that Kati's hiding something. Amuro frowns, but leaves it alone for now. Everyone has their demons, especially on this ship.

"Well, don't feel in any, any /rush/," Amuro suggests, holding up his hands. "So long as you're not planning to blow up the ship and destroy the AEUG, your business is, you know, your business. As far as I'm, uh, concerned."

"So, moving, moving on. Where did you learn to throw those, uh, those punches? EFA training?" Amuro Ray, notably, never had any EFA training of any sort. All of his 'fighting' 'moves' are based on dumb luck and old action movies.

Which is probably why Quattro (that bastard) usually gets the upper hand.

Kati frowns again. Glancing at her hand for a moment, she reflexivly clenches and unclenches her fist in a wave. "I don't know... What I just told you... Those are the only memories I have, before waking up onboard the Argama. At least... The only clear ones, anyways. I can recall what I've learned. The skills, and knowledge... But I don't know how I got them, or where... Or how I even ended up on Von Braun in the first place..."

She shakes her head in frustration, and takes another sip. "They're saying I'm some kind of experiment... But..."

Well, that certainly sounds like a Cyber-Newtype.

"Huh," Amuro replies, scratching at his tangled mess of hair-- which is, it's worth noting, not as gross or matted or /whatever/ as Cagalli's by a long shot. We probably have Beltorchika to thank for that. "That's rough. We've got a couple other people with that kind of amnesia around... you should see if you can get in touch with them, maybe."

Kati shakes her head, hiding her clear annoyance at the suggestion. "It *won't* affect my performance, sir. I'm not going to sit around and mope because of this." She then sighs, realising how she's about to sound. "I may not understand how I came to be a part of this crew, but I'll follow orders, and do my job."

"No need to get defensive, I'm not here to, to bust your balls," Amuro replies. "I just thought it might help to talk to some people who've, y'know, gone through the same thing."

Inwardly he frowns. Did she not hear him, or is this a conditioned response? It's troubling, but that's the nature of these experiments. Messing with peoples' brains... he briefly thinks about Staren's bizarre new machine, but that will either sort itself out or blow up in everyone's faces. Can't be worrying about it either way.

"Well, don't worry about it. Like I said, the only person you need to worry about listening to is Bright." A pause. "And maybe Quattro, too." That bastard. "He's in charge of the pilots, after all."

"Quattro..." Kati frowns at that name, but nods. "Very well. I understand." she replies, and takes another sip of her drink.

The masked pilot then asks, "Amuro... You know Quattro well, don't you?"

"We've got a... unique relationship," Amuro replies guardedly. Meanwhile, a legion of lonely teenaged girls who write questionable fanfics about the hero of the One Year War and his famous rival squeal in delight, seeing this as proof of their theories.

"I trust him on the battlefield, and that's all I can ask in this outfit. He's... very good at what he does." More squealing. "So what's your goal here? What are you aiming for in, uh, in joining us?"

"... Survival, it seems." Kati admits, a little reluctantly. "I probably know too much to let me just leave, and even if I did, I don't know where I could go. I've already..." She begins, and cuts herself off, suddently feeling *bery* troubled about something before she clamps it down. "I've broken /out/ of an A-LAWS base, and stolen a Mobile Suit. And if they identified that Arm Slave as one of yours... Then I'm probably already considered a terrorist." She rubs her head in confusion, and with a single, swift stroke, she *slams* her fist into the punching bag, causing it the bolts holding it in place to creak ominously. "I don't even know *where* I would go, even *if* I could leave."

Amuro starts a bit at Kati's sudden fury, but swiftly hides the reaction behind a badly faked cough. "Well, we're all just getting by one way or the other," he agrees. "I couldn't go back to the EFA even if I wanted to. Who knows what they'd do to me this time." As if the brainwashing wasn't bad enough. "It's the same for Captain Bright. And half the crew of the Argama's former Zeon, so they're in the same boat-- can't go to the EFA, can't go to Zeon. It's here or the..." his mouth twists, "Trailers. So, I guess, welcome to the, the /club/."

Kati sighs, and leans against a wall. "Thank you, sir." she says. However, after a few moments, she looks back, and says, "There's... There's something I need to ask you. You must know it better then anyone, but... I never... I don't think I understood it before I woke up in that medical room."

"No worries," comes Amuro's response. "We're all in this boat together." Figuratively and literally.

When Kati brings up having a question, he leans off the wall a little to get a better look at her. "Well, go ahead and ask," he says. "But, y'know, depending on the question, I may or may not answer."

A man's got to have some secrets, after all.

"How... How did you manage it?" Kati asks, somewhat akwardly. "I didn't have any problems when I was fighting, either on foot, or in a Mobile suit, but... Now... When I try to remember it, I..." Again, a dark feeling washes over her, and she stops herself from showing it, no matter how obvious it must seem to Amuro. "I feel so horrible. Just... feeling them as they..." she manages, not quite managing to say it out loud.

So it's that kind of question. Amuro frowns, and looks down towards the floor.

"Yeah, that," he mumbles. "So you are sensitive to it, eh?" The Newtype shakes his head. No wonder the A-LAWS were experimenting on her. They just can't get enough of counterfeit Newtypes, regardless of the human cost. "That's... unfortunate."

"When I was, uh, around your age... you're a teenager, right? When I was, was a teenager, I piloted the Gundam, and I killed many men and women." He switches his gaze, looking up at the ceiling. "I felt every death. Each one more intimately than the last. Fear, anger, despair, acceptance, I felt every kind of emotion as I snuffed their lives out of existence. Every time it hurt more. Every time I hated myself more."

"When the War was over, it took me seven years to recover. And now I'm out here again, killing even more people. And you want to know how I do it." Amuro shakes his head, and sighs. "You just /do/. You have to accept, in your heart, in your, your /soul/, that the people you're fighting have their cause, and you've got, uh, you've got... yours." Closes his eyes. "And if you can't screen it out, if you can't handle it, then you go insane, or you die, or you stop."

"But if you want to keep fighting, striving for a better tomorrow, working towards your own future... then you accept every death you cause into yourself, and you live with it, and you promise to accept the consequences when they come." His voice grows quiet. "Because they will."

Kati considers Amuro's advice, then scowls. "I know your history, sir. You *weren't* a soldier. You were a studant with considerable technical expertise, and by chance, the only one who could manage to work out the RX-78's controls in time. You weren't trained for it. You weren't prepared."

She slams her fist against the bulkhead in anger. "*I* was! Why else would I have training on infiltration, covert operations, mobile suit combat...? I *am* a soldier. So why the hell can't I accept that? Why wasn't I ready for it?"

She rubs her head again as a headache and nausea overcome her for a moment, then... "This is stupid. I shouldn't be worrying about these things, but..."

"You can't blame yourself," Amuro replies, voice level. "They... /did/ something to you, to your, to your /mind/. You don't know where those abilities /came/ from." He waves a hand in the air. "They can't /program them into you/. They have the /technology/ and, more importantly, more... horrifyingly, the will to /use/ it. For all you... for all /you/ know, you were a spoiled rich brat from the suburbs."

"We don't, uhm, we don't ge to /choose/ the situations we're /in/, you know. I didn't. You didn't. No one does, especially not in a war." The Newtype looks off into the middle distance, subconsciously chewing on his thumbnail. "No one's ever ready to kill someone. But this is a war. You've killed already." A pause. "You'll kill again. Some of these kids... they think they can fight a war-- /win/ a war-- without casualties, but... it's not possible. I'm sorry this happened to you, kid. I really am. You have no idea how sorry." He sighs. "But here you are, you know? Here you are, and you've gotta fight for your freedom, and that means, like it or not, you've gotta learn to live with death."

"For all *I* know, sir, I was assembled from spare parts grown in a tank." She sighs. "But I shouldn't have a problem with this. Rrrgh, I just don't understand." She says.

Lifting her mask for a moment, she ubs her eyes, keeping them tightly shut while it's raised. What /is/ visible are the darker patches covering her eye sockets and eyelids, until she pulls it back into place. "There... is one other thing."

Amuro looks down at his watch, then back at Kati. "I have a meeting with Quattro, but I can squeeze in another couple minutes, sure," he allows. "You're having a hard time adjusting, and that's understandable. We can help you work through this, though. You're not the only one going through this kind of thing around here." He gives a short, strained smile. "You're not alone."

"What's the other thing, kid? I'm happy to... try and help, you know, where I can."

A meeting with Quattro? How fitting. Turning to Amuro, she asks, "Who's... 'Edward'?" After a moment to let him think, she adds, "When Quattro debriefed me after I regained consciousness, I saw... Something. It seemed to weigh on his mind."

Amuro, who was just trying on a smile a moment ago, loses that fleeting jocularity. The veteran pilot turns away from the young Cyber-Newtype-- or whatever she is. Clearly her presence had rattled Quattro.

"Look, I've, uh, gotta go," he mutters, heading for the door. "Don't ask about Edward, okay? He's..." Amuro frowns, looking out into the hallway but seeming to see something entirely different. Briefly, he grips the door's frame more tightly. "He's someone who died a long time ago."

For a moment, he looks back over his shoulder. "Good luck, kid. I'll see you soon."

And then he's gone.