trans_9 | This is the Neo-Swedish engineers' fault, okay

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This is the Neo-Swedish engineers' fault, okay

Allenby rocked back and forth on her heels, frowning at the Great Wall for a couple of reasons. One, apparently the Daligig or whoever had yanked out a big chunk of the Great Wall (or one of them, given how many Earths there were) and slapped it into the City like a cheap bookcase. She wasn't big on cultural heritage preservation, but sheesh.

The second reason was that she was thinking. Next to her feet was a bag of toys: jacks, a gymnast's ribbon, a kite, spinning tops, and a few superballs. Believe or not, she was going to use these to develop a new specialty technique--just as soon as she figured out where to begin.

"Man, Nobel Gundam... I knew I shoulda asked Chibodee and George what they did to figure out theirs." She winced when she caught herself talking to her Gundam yet again, and she wasn't even in the Hangar this time... oh well. Allenby picked up the ribbon and began running, executing a technique she already knew well from piloting.

[ooc: So anyone in the Water Cooler post who wanted to do sparring/training stuff, this would be a good place to do it! :3 Or anyone else who'd like to pop in, of course.]

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He was somewhat relieved to be having this conversation, sobering as it was. There was so much he was still personally unclear on, and while he did feel the most at ease discussing things in depth with the rest of Celestial Being, they weren't exactly a group predisposed to sharing conflicted feelings towards their targets.

"We may be closer to discovering their objective, however—" Allelujah recalled what it was like, fearing for Setsuna's life in the aftermath of NiSaris, "—it's odd. We may not like the answer we receive from them even after our diplomatic efforts."

The Arios pilot frowned, offering the jack back to Allenby.

"Setsuna doesn't like talking about it, but I wonder what it is the Ohm could tell us that would justify what's happened. Not just on my Earth, but yours too."

Somber and truthful, Allelujah was openly worried that just being able to contact them wouldn't be enough now. Knowing what they were after was different from truly understanding them. And Stacy was a living orphanage of worlds, cultures, and peoples, all victims of one common enemy unlike anything he'd ever seen. What could have been horrible enough to ignite the ceaseless animosity of what was revealing itself to be a sentient race?

Edited 2011-06-27 05:25 (UTC)

Allenby took the jack, rolling it around in her fingers. She kind of liked the spiky feeling, even if she wasn't yet sure how to get a zero-g technique out of it--it could still be good for when she had to fight on the ground.

She held in a comment that Setsuna didn't seem to like talking about anything. Allelujah's thoughts weren't too far from her own; Allenby didn't know what kind of motive could possibly excuse the murder of trillions. But that they could be communicated with at all was still something she took as a sign of hope.

"I dunno, honestly. I don't think I could forgive 'em for that, not unless they undo what they did. But it's still better than what we had before. And even if they won't budge, I bet we can find away around them if we talk to them enough."

Imagine Setsuna not liking talking about anything, then imagine that magnified by a noticeable amount. Yeah. Allelujah sighed.

"Something like this might not be able to be undone." And the truth hurt, but he hadn't survived four years of imprisonment to die here and now. "The battles will most likely continue until then. It's a haphazard way of doing things, but if it's only way we have to establish contact them, we don't really have a choice but to go forward."

Feeling a bit more comfortable with the situation, Allelujah had visibly relaxed. Enough to show a bit of a smile, anyway.

"Discovering a new attack will still have some use for you in the future, then." As much as Celestial Being had worked nonstop to make sure their Gundams were back at optimal performance.

Allenby clenched her fists. She knew that it might be impossible to restore Earth... putting a whole universe back together just seemed too much. But she wasn't going to accept that until she had no other choice. Even if the GIA was lying, they could find their own way. "Well until we know for sure, that's going to be my goal," she said. After all the Gundam Fighters had pulled together like that... it angered her more than she could say.

But she really would rather talk about what she was doing now. "It will, once I figure out just what it's gonna be. I'm trying to get something that'll be useful in outer space and in gravity right now. I've met stuff on this ship and planetside that needs a good whack in the head too." She tossed the jacks up in the air and snatched them back. "These things'd be good for a ground technique, though, so I'm gonna keep them for something later."

"I see." And Allelujah left it at that, following her into the next conversation rather easily. He was feeling as though he didn't really have to say that he agreed, and that was something he was grateful for, albeit silently. His gaze drifted momentarily to the rest of the toys, catching on the kite.

"Would melee or bombardment tactics be more useful to your unit?" ... Well, he hadn't really intended to help, but the very loud presence of other Gundams was still an extraordinary thing to him.

Bombardment... Allenby thought about that as she followed his look to the kite. That could be useful, definitely. And there were other Gundam Fighters who used stuff like that--Chibodee's twin shooters came to mind. But that wasn't her thing.

"Well, my fightin' style is primarily melee. I'm not really interested in overwhelming bombardment kind of stuff," she said. "But my current special move is ranged, and I want to do something like that."

"With that ribbon? Or was it something else," Allelujah replied honestly, remembering brief instances in the thick of NiSaris when he would run close enough to glimpse the other Gundams in action without jamming their communications.

Allenby chuckled. As weighty as their talk had been and her seriousness in this endeavor, Allenby just couldn't resist the chance to show off. Besides, there really wasn't a better way to demonstrate.

"Well, I'll show ya!" She clenched her fists behind her back and then brought her arms straight up in front of her. Green light burst from between her fingertips just before she flung the energy ring up at a tower on the Wall. "Nobel Hula Hoop!"

Allelujah wasn't about to stop her, instead watching the energy ring sail and arc in the air with a look that skirted the line between disbelieving and fascinated. His suspension of disbelief had been out in full swing lately, but this was really something else.

"That's amazing," he said, staring hard at the direction she launched the energy ring. "Your own attacks correlate to your Gundam's?"

"Yup!" said Allenby, catching the ring as it returned. It dissipated into the air. "Every move I make inside of my Gundam is what the Gundam actually does. It's a mobile fighter, not a mobile suit--that's why you gotta be a martial artist to pilot one."

She grinned. "'Course, it doesn't have a beam saber that's as long as a space colony like you guys do, but I think it's more fun that way."

Carefully omitting that even Allelujah himself was unaware of that weapon that Setsuna had unleashed on the Ohm, he was nevertheless impressed.

"A technology like this was adapted for Gundams ... it's almost unbelievable." He paused, though neglected to say anything on his own suit. "Though I suppose I'm still surprised that other Earths also had use for Gundams. That there are other pilots, too."

It was sobering, to know that his terrible existence might not have been all that unique. Or his Earth's, for that matter.

"Heh, it was a big shock to me too. Or that there's more than one Earth in the first place!" But her grin faded when she remembered finding out that the Gundams of other Earths were used for the exact opposite of her own.

"But the way you use 'em is so different than how I think of Gundams. I mean, you seem like a nice guy, and so're Kira and Duo, but--" Well, crap. Where was she going to go with this sentence except you kill people with your Gundams and that sucks? "My world uses Gundams as a replacement for war. I just can't my head around 'em being war itself."

Allelujah's expression visibly dropped, as though he was both simultaneously avoiding something and feeling as close to regret as he was permitted. He exhaled a sigh and moved forward instead to finally pick up the kite from its place among the toys, absorbed in the lines and colors for as long as it took him to gather the courage to say what he wanted to.

"Our Gundams weren't made for that reason."

...yeah, that hadn't been a great thing to say. Allenby dropped onto her haunches, resting her arms on her knees and watching him stare at the kite.

"...right," she said, after he finally spoke again. "Your friends said... they're for stoppin' war."

But the way they did that was through bloodshed and to Allenby, that still made it wrong.

"I know how that sounds. Waging a war to end war," Allelujah replied, weighing the spool of string in the hand not preoccupied by the kite. The same one that had charged the controls for Arios at NiSaris and gunned down countless Ohm as though they were nothing more than animals.

The same that Hallelujah had used, all fiery nerves and violent resolve, to crash his Gundam straight into the carapace of a leviathan.

He knew well how it sounded, how it must've looked.

"It sounds ridiculous." Allenby twiddled the jacks and tossed them out to watch how they fell. "But so far, I haven't spoken to anyone who'll talk about it with more than two sentences at a time, so maybe there's something about it that I'm not seeing."

Would Allelujah shed some light on it, or was he going to be as close-mouthed as Setsuna and Feldt had been? Allenby hoped not. He honestly seemed like a nice guy. Quiet, but in a different way than the other two were. "When you go intervening between two sides--what do you do after that? Do you make them sit down and talk it out, or do you just crash in and then leave?"

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This is the Neo-Swedish engineers' fault, okay

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