STMC: Let's Fly Together
WHO: Nono, Larc Mellk Mal
WHERE: Kaminatsuki Outpost, Neo Solar System New Tenth Planet: Kaminatsuki
WHEN: Sunday, roughly simultaneous with the IPL's victory party.
WHAT: As the IPL celebrates their final victory over their darkest foe to date, two friends meet in a far away place to speak their minds, and bare scars long hidden away.
WATCH FOR!! Cutest scene in MUSH history.
THE FUTURE(#656Te)
12,000 years after the great Age of Gods saw mankind's technology reach unfathomable levels in the sole pursuit of the desctruction of the terrible Uchuu Kaiju - Space Monsters - the war rages on. This system was encircled for twelve thousand years by a renegade man-made defense system that attacked humans with the same psychic abilities possessed by the Space Monsters, and kept men from ever returning to the stars. Now that defense system's command unit has returned, and turned them once more to the defense of Mankind...but so too has the Space Monster menace...
It's over.
Months of preparation. Months of crying and thinking, sitting alone above a desolate blister on the universe that will someday hemorrhage and bleed destruction upon everyone...seventy days of loneliness, of believing resolutely that one and only one thing stood between the universe and total destruction.
They wouldn't understand. She wasn't sure she was right anymore; Amuro had yelled at her, and...and she'd scared everyone so badly so many times, and now she couldn't ever be sure she'd made the right choice. But she had made that choice, and thinking back, she thinks the initial decision was OK, at least, and there's really nothing else she can use to base a decision on...
She had greater weights upon her shoulders than others. That was her destiny, as Buster Machine Number Seven - the first and best line of defense against the Fluctuating Gravity Wells, no matter where they may come from.
Nono sits on an observation deck near the exterior of the military base on Kaminatsuki, hands folded in her lap and watching the stars.
But it was over now. She'd have to answer for all her decisions, and she knew they'd never understand if she told them the real truth...
There was a party going on now, she remembers, but...she can't bring herself to go see her friends. Not yet. Not while the fear of their reactions is still so new.
"Nono was really stupid again..." she mumbles, morose.
The uniform she was permitted to wear wasn't that of a Topless of the Fraternity, but at least it wasn't hospital wear. Bad enough she was still required to wear that cage that kept her Seal firmly in place without reinforcing the appearance that she was some kind of ... infirm.
While it was a relief that the Space Monster threat had been overcome, the cost had been high--and Larc had felt... useless. Even Amuro--the things he had said to Nono--that he had brought back the Nono they all knew (and cared about), and what had she done?
What had she done, but rail impotently at grief and then, in the end, had ultimately run to -her-?
So Larc chose to be frustrated and humiliated rather than simply awkward. Eventually she decided she'd set out, folded ruin of a scarf spared further damage by attempts to repair what could be salvaged held in her arms, and atop that, a small music box. A patched up visor tucked into the crook of her arm.
It was just coincidence that she was passing by. For how long she stayed is never advertised, but after a stretch of silence, the music box is permitted to play, held open in Larc's hands while she leans against one of its entryways in sullen nonchalance.
Nono sits there, staring out, seemingly lost in her own thoughts.
Most think she's stupid, or naive, or immature; that her flighty moods and happy smiles are all there is to her, that somehow the fact that she narrows her eyes or doesn't smile as much when she's fighting means that she's a completely different person. That's not true at all. To keep people happy, and to be happy, aren't those the greatest things you can have? So, what's wrong with smiling at people, when there's time for it?
Sometimes people confuse Nono so much.
Her eyes crack open as she hears that old melody, though - something she's cherished for a long time, a sad song about a girl, and the world she loves. For a second, she just listens, thinking it might be just notes filtering through her memory, humming along...but then as she realizes it's not just in her own head she turns around quickly, eyes wide. Didn't she--
Larc. Nono's face falls, a little, remembering...the terrible things she's done, and allowed to happen, to the other girl. "Ah...Onee-sama..." Nono stammers, then looks a little spooked as she remembers how sharply Larc has rebuked her for calling her that earlier. "Ah..." she stammers again. "It's nice to see you again..."
Nono. Buster Machine Number Seven. Protector Goddess of Space.
Once one manifested Toplessness, once you became one of the Fraternity, that was who you were. You held the power to protect Humanity - or so it had been, once, until Titan changed everything - and therefore you were expected to perform in certain ways.
For Larc, being the top Topless was supposed to be every facet of her. No other surprises. What you see is what you get, and if you couldn't handle that, then you were an idiot. There wasn't supposed to be anything else.
Nono had a way of triggering great change. Dodo-head.
There had been a time when she would have given anything just to hear it one more time. Nono had been dead, and here she was, like a magic trick's prestige.
It's nice to see y--
"--I brought back your things," interjects Larc, eyes lidding, her chin held up briefly as she snaps the lid closed on the music box, cutting off its chiming tune with a soft clack.
Perhaps she was beginning to understand, a little. The example Nono has become.
"This scarf is a mess," she says, stepping stiffly over to deposit the lot into her arms--the visor, however, clatters on the floor. She pauses, staring at it. "...Amuro gave me that. You'd better take it, otherwise--it'll just gather dust."
Nono stands, slow. She has her uniform's sleeves off, leaving her in the base jumper of the Fraternity uniform. Still, she turns, clasping her hands before her in a worried posture, her eyes watery. "Onee-sama," she breathes, because Larc is being so...
She holds her hands out to accept the bundle. The scarf feels nice to have again, and the music box, but...the visor falls to the floor...clattered, haphazardly repaired, and...
The android girl sighs, setting the bundle down on the bench where she'd been sitting. "I see..." she murmurs. "So Amuro..."
She closes her eyes, sad and slow, for just an instant, and then kneels down, groping for the visor. Picking it up, she holds it, carefully...but does not banish it, doesn't do whatever nanotechnological sorcery transforms the android from a service robot into the terrifying bane of the enemies of humanity. She looks at it, a thumb tracing the cracks in its orange surface. "So then..." So then onee-sama...so Larc...
Her eyes travel up to the scowling girl in that damnable /cage/, but she just says, "Onee-sama...sit with me?"
The tears shed while wearing it had stained the surface once they dried. Larc had gone through the trouble to remove every trace of them, with the same care she'd taken in assembling the broken pieces into a recognizable whole.
But anyone could have assembled that. Maybe Amuro. Maybe even Excellen -- she'd been more outspokenly worried about Nono than Larc ever had been, hadn't she?
It could've been anyone.
She's turned her head away, eyes lidded, but then it's 'Onee-sama' and she glances sidelong at Nono. Heaves a sigh, of exaggerated annoyance she doesn't really feel, and relents. "It's not as if I've got anything else to do." Larc seats herself on the bench at her side, crossing her arms.
"Isn't there a victory party going on? Why aren't you there?"
Could've been anyone, indeed - but who else would care?
Amuro was her friend, and might be sentimental enough to value the visor, sure, but he wouldn't have cared that much. Excellen wasn't nearly sappy enough to put together that shattered mass back into a single, unified piece - and Nono doubted the chipper blonde cared about her that much, anyway. They'd only spoken once.
No. Only Larc. Only Onee-sama.
Nono can see through Larc's Too Cool For You act by now, they've been together far too long for the words to fool her anymore. But that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, and her hand curls around the visor, her eyes close in pain. She sets the visor down on the bundle, and then sets the bundle on her lap as she sits next to Larc, hands folded on top of it all, trying to find some measure of enjoyment in Larc's presence, even through the thick tension between them.
"Nono has done bad things..." she says, lamely, to Larc's question. "I...couldn't see them right now. I cannot look them in the face, after...the things I have done."
Most of them don't even seem to understand, she thinks. But Amuro saw, saw that she didn't create Diebuster as an act of courage or mercy. She did it because she thought...
She hangs her head, still mired in her own morass of pity. "Onee-sama..." she says, slowly. "Have you ever heard the story of the last bird on Mars?"
Larc was never very good at covering her tracks, so to speak; it doesn't occur to her that Nono would read right through it to the truth, or that it was her own telling actions that gave her away.
...Did... did that make her sappy?
(Don't ever say that where she could hear it!)
It's not that Larc isn't glad Nono survived after all, or that she isn't, on some level, pleased to see her. But mixed with it, leaving her conflicted, is still the same jumble of misguided resentment and hurt pride. Even after everything, that tension remains, a heavy weight on either side.
Life goes on.
And yet to see her like this... feeling sorry for herself (as if she hadn't been stewing in that same sentiment herself for god knows how long now) has her on edge.
She doesn't say no, but she doesn't exactly encourage her to go on, either.
"..."
The android girl's hands touch the material of the scarf. The feel of the material is warm and comforting - it's torn, scorched, but she thinks she can get that fixed. Or maybe she shouldn't...
A memory of sins committed, and friends wounded, she thinks. She allows herself a tiny, pitiful smile, and wonders when she became so prone to thinking like that.
Her head rises up, and she looks up and out, staring into the endless sky. Her domain. Hers. It's big, too big - so massive, it's difficult for even her to imagine its size.
"Nobody knows why," she says, "but...the birds on Mars all died out. When she hatched from her egg, she was already the last of her kind."
She doesn't look at Larc - her eyes remain fixed on that distant point, a star she could name with a thought. A simple request to the Legion. No kind of effort whatsoever. Was that what she had become? "She never tried to fly in the sky," she whispers. "She kept standing by the edge of the water where she had been born...and she never once even tried to fly."
"But..."
She closes her eyes, her hands weaving through a hole in the fabirc of her scarf, as if holding on to it would let her hold on to the happy days it represents in her memories. "One day, when she grew up...On the night of a meteor shower...she flew away. Almost as if she was trying to chase the falling stars..."
She pauses, her eyes tearing up, her thoughts turned inward.
"That is...the last record of her," she murmurs, and leans forward, closing her eyes in mourning.
Nono's visor slips off the top of the pile, tumbling down toward the ground below.
Larc stands up abruptly, with a quiet scuff of the soles of her shoes patting down on the floor. For a few moments, she's torn right down the middle -- part of her wants to express her relief that she's alive and doesn't know how, the other part wants to SHAKE her for being so infuriatingly ... normal.
When she isn't, she isn't at all!
And here she is, telling a melancholy tale about Mars' last bird.
Her fingers curl at her sides, tightening their grip until her fists tremble at the strain of it, half-lidded eyes turned away. She isn't sure when she began to miss Nono's smile. Perhaps the fact she does only serves to make her angrier at the unfairness of it all.
Nono's making it hard to be upset with her, when she's coming across so ... vulnerable. Is this really the Goddess of Space, humanity's hope, that they were willing to toss she and all the other Topless to some corner of the Solar System to be /patients/?
"Maybe that's exactly what she was doing--maybe she left her home, where she lived all her life, to go join the sea of stars!"
"Yes," Nono murmurs, wincing at Larc's anger. "Maybe...she did..."
She looks up at Larc, with a sad, kind of pitiful look. "Onee-sama..." she says, "...I think...if she did go out to the sea of stars...I don't think she was lonely forever." The taller girl sets her burden aside, and then carefully stands as well, turning toward Larc with arms hanging low, fingers interlaced. "I think the stars gave her something very precious."
She leans down, fingers carefully clutching the precious visor as she picks it up once again, turning it over and over in her hands.
"You know, though..." Is she even telling her this for Larc's benefit? "...Nono-riri is Nono's hero...but Nono can't ever be Nono-riri."
Her eyes travel back up, toward Larc, still playing with that visor. "That's because Nono is special, Onee-sama. Nono-riri...she isn't anybody special at all." That smile again - warmer, comfortable. "Nono-riri was just an ordinary girl."
Did she... resent Nono for being different? For being special? For having the power that set all of humanity at awe of her, the power that inspired battle-hardened men to call her a Goddess?
And yet here that girl is -- Nono, Buster Machine Number Seven, the savior of humanity -- having... having...
As much insecurity as any girl might. Hurting like any girl might.
Larc doesn't turn around.
Can't, for a little while. Ultimately, she's drawn to look anyway. What she heard holds true. Seeing her verifies it, lends particular weight and significance to the realization:
She's not angry at Nono. The source of that feeling it's not--Nono isn't the one who's changed. It was Larc herself. It wasn't Nono being unfair. If anyone was being unfair to anyone else--Larc was the one being needlessly cruel. Nono is unlike anyone else in the solar system. Alone in what she is, she has no other example to live up to.
She was just doing the best she could. "Then...!" Larc can feel her face go warm and knows emotion is coloring it, feeling embarassed for it just would make it worse, "Then don't go anymore!" One foot stomps down on the floor as she shakes her head hard, fingers still curled into fists. It's almost petulant. She doesn't care.
(This is pathetic. My hands are even shaking. But--) "So... so...!"
Bizarrely, Nono finds herself smiling as Larc's icy demeanor melts into a petulant, angry fit. The android girl shakes her head, slowly. "I can't stop, Onee-sama. I, Nono, worked very hard to become what I am...even if that's what I was all along...it was my belief that got me here. I could never stop now. And..."
The girl blushes. The android's cheeks tint, just slightly, impossible, unimaginable, but somehow... "And besides, Onee-sama...a silly bird like me has to follow the stars, right?"
She gives that sad, but somehow calm, smile again. "And there's one star I already promised...to follow all the way..."
She holds up one hand, and between the index finger and thumb, something impossible happens - tiny, a microscopic singularity forms, shaping itself into a shape like a small key. The singularity is covered in a thin layer of crystalline matter, which Nono grips cautiously between her index finger and the pad of her thumb.
She reaches out, and with a careful grip, grasps Larc's jaw, holding her steady while Nono leans forward to slowly bring that key up to the hole on Larc's restraint headset.
The pale-haired Topless seems to have expected nothing less than such an answer. It's bittersweet, because she knew she'd have no choice but to keep going. Nonetheless, it's a painful reply to hear, when this cage roots her to uselessness. If you fly away, with her own wings clipped, how will Larc be able to--
A singularity, manifest through arts lost with time, a technique only now left to Nono to use.
A key.
Stunned, perhaps even a little lost in wonder, Larc lifts her chin into the android's grasp with eyes lidding. Silent. Still for one gentle moment that is too delicate to shatter yet with words.
It passes with a click, and a metallic cage falling away in two pieces to clatter noisily to the floor, bringing her suddenly out of--
What had it been? A reverie? A daze? Awe?
The world falls still as Nono fits the key inside.
She wants to say something, but can't think of anything. Words won't come, and sound...would cheapen this moment, when everything comes true.
Click.
The sound of that damnable cage hitting the floor is like a crash of thunder, and the world resumes. Around Nono there is a sudden eruption of red light, as her internal reactors instantly come to life. Her pupils burn like fire, her hair flows like the heart of the world. Her jumper momentarily dissipates, leaving her naked in the world for a microsecond before the armored jumpsuit of Buster Machine Seven forms, the soft skin of a normal girl replaced by the smooth, oddly supple material of Number Seven's gloves. Her other hand slowly rises, and dark red fingers take hold of the loose tab on Larc's seal, pulling, slowly, gingerly - she has seen the other girl tear it off so many times, but it always seemed like that would hurt, and now, here, Nono could never imagine hurting this girl...
Her visor is simply gone, still lying there on the floor. She doesn't seem to care, and the tears visible in those bright blue eyes aren't shielded at all from Larc's wondering gaze.
Nono smiles, a tear of whatever strange emotion are running through her mind escaping to fly away in the strange, not-quite-right gravity that follows Nono around wherever she goes. "Let's fly together, Onee-sama," she says.
The force shield snaps into being around them both, and Nono's strong hands grasp at Larc's, and without any concern for the security of the station, ignoring the danger it poses because she knows they have defenses and because this is a thousand times more important than any public complaint, Nono takes off, and takes Larc with her, blasting through the safety glass of the observation deck like it's not even there, away from the planet, away from everything - out, toward their home, toward the stars.
WHERE: Kaminatsuki Outpost, Neo Solar System New Tenth Planet: Kaminatsuki
WHEN: Sunday, roughly simultaneous with the IPL's victory party.
WHAT: As the IPL celebrates their final victory over their darkest foe to date, two friends meet in a far away place to speak their minds, and bare scars long hidden away.
WATCH FOR!! Cutest scene in MUSH history.
THE FUTURE(#656Te)
12,000 years after the great Age of Gods saw mankind's technology reach unfathomable levels in the sole pursuit of the desctruction of the terrible Uchuu Kaiju - Space Monsters - the war rages on. This system was encircled for twelve thousand years by a renegade man-made defense system that attacked humans with the same psychic abilities possessed by the Space Monsters, and kept men from ever returning to the stars. Now that defense system's command unit has returned, and turned them once more to the defense of Mankind...but so too has the Space Monster menace...
It's over.
Months of preparation. Months of crying and thinking, sitting alone above a desolate blister on the universe that will someday hemorrhage and bleed destruction upon everyone...seventy days of loneliness, of believing resolutely that one and only one thing stood between the universe and total destruction.
They wouldn't understand. She wasn't sure she was right anymore; Amuro had yelled at her, and...and she'd scared everyone so badly so many times, and now she couldn't ever be sure she'd made the right choice. But she had made that choice, and thinking back, she thinks the initial decision was OK, at least, and there's really nothing else she can use to base a decision on...
She had greater weights upon her shoulders than others. That was her destiny, as Buster Machine Number Seven - the first and best line of defense against the Fluctuating Gravity Wells, no matter where they may come from.
Nono sits on an observation deck near the exterior of the military base on Kaminatsuki, hands folded in her lap and watching the stars.
But it was over now. She'd have to answer for all her decisions, and she knew they'd never understand if she told them the real truth...
There was a party going on now, she remembers, but...she can't bring herself to go see her friends. Not yet. Not while the fear of their reactions is still so new.
"Nono was really stupid again..." she mumbles, morose.
The uniform she was permitted to wear wasn't that of a Topless of the Fraternity, but at least it wasn't hospital wear. Bad enough she was still required to wear that cage that kept her Seal firmly in place without reinforcing the appearance that she was some kind of ... infirm.
While it was a relief that the Space Monster threat had been overcome, the cost had been high--and Larc had felt... useless. Even Amuro--the things he had said to Nono--that he had brought back the Nono they all knew (and cared about), and what had she done?
What had she done, but rail impotently at grief and then, in the end, had ultimately run to -her-?
So Larc chose to be frustrated and humiliated rather than simply awkward. Eventually she decided she'd set out, folded ruin of a scarf spared further damage by attempts to repair what could be salvaged held in her arms, and atop that, a small music box. A patched up visor tucked into the crook of her arm.
It was just coincidence that she was passing by. For how long she stayed is never advertised, but after a stretch of silence, the music box is permitted to play, held open in Larc's hands while she leans against one of its entryways in sullen nonchalance.
Nono sits there, staring out, seemingly lost in her own thoughts.
Most think she's stupid, or naive, or immature; that her flighty moods and happy smiles are all there is to her, that somehow the fact that she narrows her eyes or doesn't smile as much when she's fighting means that she's a completely different person. That's not true at all. To keep people happy, and to be happy, aren't those the greatest things you can have? So, what's wrong with smiling at people, when there's time for it?
Sometimes people confuse Nono so much.
Her eyes crack open as she hears that old melody, though - something she's cherished for a long time, a sad song about a girl, and the world she loves. For a second, she just listens, thinking it might be just notes filtering through her memory, humming along...but then as she realizes it's not just in her own head she turns around quickly, eyes wide. Didn't she--
Larc. Nono's face falls, a little, remembering...the terrible things she's done, and allowed to happen, to the other girl. "Ah...Onee-sama..." Nono stammers, then looks a little spooked as she remembers how sharply Larc has rebuked her for calling her that earlier. "Ah..." she stammers again. "It's nice to see you again..."
Nono. Buster Machine Number Seven. Protector Goddess of Space.
Once one manifested Toplessness, once you became one of the Fraternity, that was who you were. You held the power to protect Humanity - or so it had been, once, until Titan changed everything - and therefore you were expected to perform in certain ways.
For Larc, being the top Topless was supposed to be every facet of her. No other surprises. What you see is what you get, and if you couldn't handle that, then you were an idiot. There wasn't supposed to be anything else.
Nono had a way of triggering great change. Dodo-head.
There had been a time when she would have given anything just to hear it one more time. Nono had been dead, and here she was, like a magic trick's prestige.
It's nice to see y--
"--I brought back your things," interjects Larc, eyes lidding, her chin held up briefly as she snaps the lid closed on the music box, cutting off its chiming tune with a soft clack.
Perhaps she was beginning to understand, a little. The example Nono has become.
"This scarf is a mess," she says, stepping stiffly over to deposit the lot into her arms--the visor, however, clatters on the floor. She pauses, staring at it. "...Amuro gave me that. You'd better take it, otherwise--it'll just gather dust."
Nono stands, slow. She has her uniform's sleeves off, leaving her in the base jumper of the Fraternity uniform. Still, she turns, clasping her hands before her in a worried posture, her eyes watery. "Onee-sama," she breathes, because Larc is being so...
She holds her hands out to accept the bundle. The scarf feels nice to have again, and the music box, but...the visor falls to the floor...clattered, haphazardly repaired, and...
The android girl sighs, setting the bundle down on the bench where she'd been sitting. "I see..." she murmurs. "So Amuro..."
She closes her eyes, sad and slow, for just an instant, and then kneels down, groping for the visor. Picking it up, she holds it, carefully...but does not banish it, doesn't do whatever nanotechnological sorcery transforms the android from a service robot into the terrifying bane of the enemies of humanity. She looks at it, a thumb tracing the cracks in its orange surface. "So then..." So then onee-sama...so Larc...
Her eyes travel up to the scowling girl in that damnable /cage/, but she just says, "Onee-sama...sit with me?"
The tears shed while wearing it had stained the surface once they dried. Larc had gone through the trouble to remove every trace of them, with the same care she'd taken in assembling the broken pieces into a recognizable whole.
But anyone could have assembled that. Maybe Amuro. Maybe even Excellen -- she'd been more outspokenly worried about Nono than Larc ever had been, hadn't she?
It could've been anyone.
She's turned her head away, eyes lidded, but then it's 'Onee-sama' and she glances sidelong at Nono. Heaves a sigh, of exaggerated annoyance she doesn't really feel, and relents. "It's not as if I've got anything else to do." Larc seats herself on the bench at her side, crossing her arms.
"Isn't there a victory party going on? Why aren't you there?"
Could've been anyone, indeed - but who else would care?
Amuro was her friend, and might be sentimental enough to value the visor, sure, but he wouldn't have cared that much. Excellen wasn't nearly sappy enough to put together that shattered mass back into a single, unified piece - and Nono doubted the chipper blonde cared about her that much, anyway. They'd only spoken once.
No. Only Larc. Only Onee-sama.
Nono can see through Larc's Too Cool For You act by now, they've been together far too long for the words to fool her anymore. But that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, and her hand curls around the visor, her eyes close in pain. She sets the visor down on the bundle, and then sets the bundle on her lap as she sits next to Larc, hands folded on top of it all, trying to find some measure of enjoyment in Larc's presence, even through the thick tension between them.
"Nono has done bad things..." she says, lamely, to Larc's question. "I...couldn't see them right now. I cannot look them in the face, after...the things I have done."
Most of them don't even seem to understand, she thinks. But Amuro saw, saw that she didn't create Diebuster as an act of courage or mercy. She did it because she thought...
She hangs her head, still mired in her own morass of pity. "Onee-sama..." she says, slowly. "Have you ever heard the story of the last bird on Mars?"
Larc was never very good at covering her tracks, so to speak; it doesn't occur to her that Nono would read right through it to the truth, or that it was her own telling actions that gave her away.
...Did... did that make her sappy?
(Don't ever say that where she could hear it!)
It's not that Larc isn't glad Nono survived after all, or that she isn't, on some level, pleased to see her. But mixed with it, leaving her conflicted, is still the same jumble of misguided resentment and hurt pride. Even after everything, that tension remains, a heavy weight on either side.
Life goes on.
And yet to see her like this... feeling sorry for herself (as if she hadn't been stewing in that same sentiment herself for god knows how long now) has her on edge.
She doesn't say no, but she doesn't exactly encourage her to go on, either.
"..."
The android girl's hands touch the material of the scarf. The feel of the material is warm and comforting - it's torn, scorched, but she thinks she can get that fixed. Or maybe she shouldn't...
A memory of sins committed, and friends wounded, she thinks. She allows herself a tiny, pitiful smile, and wonders when she became so prone to thinking like that.
Her head rises up, and she looks up and out, staring into the endless sky. Her domain. Hers. It's big, too big - so massive, it's difficult for even her to imagine its size.
"Nobody knows why," she says, "but...the birds on Mars all died out. When she hatched from her egg, she was already the last of her kind."
She doesn't look at Larc - her eyes remain fixed on that distant point, a star she could name with a thought. A simple request to the Legion. No kind of effort whatsoever. Was that what she had become? "She never tried to fly in the sky," she whispers. "She kept standing by the edge of the water where she had been born...and she never once even tried to fly."
"But..."
She closes her eyes, her hands weaving through a hole in the fabirc of her scarf, as if holding on to it would let her hold on to the happy days it represents in her memories. "One day, when she grew up...On the night of a meteor shower...she flew away. Almost as if she was trying to chase the falling stars..."
She pauses, her eyes tearing up, her thoughts turned inward.
"That is...the last record of her," she murmurs, and leans forward, closing her eyes in mourning.
Nono's visor slips off the top of the pile, tumbling down toward the ground below.
Larc stands up abruptly, with a quiet scuff of the soles of her shoes patting down on the floor. For a few moments, she's torn right down the middle -- part of her wants to express her relief that she's alive and doesn't know how, the other part wants to SHAKE her for being so infuriatingly ... normal.
When she isn't, she isn't at all!
And here she is, telling a melancholy tale about Mars' last bird.
Her fingers curl at her sides, tightening their grip until her fists tremble at the strain of it, half-lidded eyes turned away. She isn't sure when she began to miss Nono's smile. Perhaps the fact she does only serves to make her angrier at the unfairness of it all.
Nono's making it hard to be upset with her, when she's coming across so ... vulnerable. Is this really the Goddess of Space, humanity's hope, that they were willing to toss she and all the other Topless to some corner of the Solar System to be /patients/?
"Maybe that's exactly what she was doing--maybe she left her home, where she lived all her life, to go join the sea of stars!"
"Yes," Nono murmurs, wincing at Larc's anger. "Maybe...she did..."
She looks up at Larc, with a sad, kind of pitiful look. "Onee-sama..." she says, "...I think...if she did go out to the sea of stars...I don't think she was lonely forever." The taller girl sets her burden aside, and then carefully stands as well, turning toward Larc with arms hanging low, fingers interlaced. "I think the stars gave her something very precious."
She leans down, fingers carefully clutching the precious visor as she picks it up once again, turning it over and over in her hands.
"You know, though..." Is she even telling her this for Larc's benefit? "...Nono-riri is Nono's hero...but Nono can't ever be Nono-riri."
Her eyes travel back up, toward Larc, still playing with that visor. "That's because Nono is special, Onee-sama. Nono-riri...she isn't anybody special at all." That smile again - warmer, comfortable. "Nono-riri was just an ordinary girl."
Did she... resent Nono for being different? For being special? For having the power that set all of humanity at awe of her, the power that inspired battle-hardened men to call her a Goddess?
And yet here that girl is -- Nono, Buster Machine Number Seven, the savior of humanity -- having... having...
As much insecurity as any girl might. Hurting like any girl might.
Larc doesn't turn around.
Can't, for a little while. Ultimately, she's drawn to look anyway. What she heard holds true. Seeing her verifies it, lends particular weight and significance to the realization:
She's not angry at Nono. The source of that feeling it's not--Nono isn't the one who's changed. It was Larc herself. It wasn't Nono being unfair. If anyone was being unfair to anyone else--Larc was the one being needlessly cruel. Nono is unlike anyone else in the solar system. Alone in what she is, she has no other example to live up to.
She was just doing the best she could. "Then...!" Larc can feel her face go warm and knows emotion is coloring it, feeling embarassed for it just would make it worse, "Then don't go anymore!" One foot stomps down on the floor as she shakes her head hard, fingers still curled into fists. It's almost petulant. She doesn't care.
(This is pathetic. My hands are even shaking. But--) "So... so...!"
Bizarrely, Nono finds herself smiling as Larc's icy demeanor melts into a petulant, angry fit. The android girl shakes her head, slowly. "I can't stop, Onee-sama. I, Nono, worked very hard to become what I am...even if that's what I was all along...it was my belief that got me here. I could never stop now. And..."
The girl blushes. The android's cheeks tint, just slightly, impossible, unimaginable, but somehow... "And besides, Onee-sama...a silly bird like me has to follow the stars, right?"
She gives that sad, but somehow calm, smile again. "And there's one star I already promised...to follow all the way..."
She holds up one hand, and between the index finger and thumb, something impossible happens - tiny, a microscopic singularity forms, shaping itself into a shape like a small key. The singularity is covered in a thin layer of crystalline matter, which Nono grips cautiously between her index finger and the pad of her thumb.
She reaches out, and with a careful grip, grasps Larc's jaw, holding her steady while Nono leans forward to slowly bring that key up to the hole on Larc's restraint headset.
The pale-haired Topless seems to have expected nothing less than such an answer. It's bittersweet, because she knew she'd have no choice but to keep going. Nonetheless, it's a painful reply to hear, when this cage roots her to uselessness. If you fly away, with her own wings clipped, how will Larc be able to--
A singularity, manifest through arts lost with time, a technique only now left to Nono to use.
A key.
Stunned, perhaps even a little lost in wonder, Larc lifts her chin into the android's grasp with eyes lidding. Silent. Still for one gentle moment that is too delicate to shatter yet with words.
It passes with a click, and a metallic cage falling away in two pieces to clatter noisily to the floor, bringing her suddenly out of--
What had it been? A reverie? A daze? Awe?
The world falls still as Nono fits the key inside.
She wants to say something, but can't think of anything. Words won't come, and sound...would cheapen this moment, when everything comes true.
Click.
The sound of that damnable cage hitting the floor is like a crash of thunder, and the world resumes. Around Nono there is a sudden eruption of red light, as her internal reactors instantly come to life. Her pupils burn like fire, her hair flows like the heart of the world. Her jumper momentarily dissipates, leaving her naked in the world for a microsecond before the armored jumpsuit of Buster Machine Seven forms, the soft skin of a normal girl replaced by the smooth, oddly supple material of Number Seven's gloves. Her other hand slowly rises, and dark red fingers take hold of the loose tab on Larc's seal, pulling, slowly, gingerly - she has seen the other girl tear it off so many times, but it always seemed like that would hurt, and now, here, Nono could never imagine hurting this girl...
Her visor is simply gone, still lying there on the floor. She doesn't seem to care, and the tears visible in those bright blue eyes aren't shielded at all from Larc's wondering gaze.
Nono smiles, a tear of whatever strange emotion are running through her mind escaping to fly away in the strange, not-quite-right gravity that follows Nono around wherever she goes. "Let's fly together, Onee-sama," she says.
The force shield snaps into being around them both, and Nono's strong hands grasp at Larc's, and without any concern for the security of the station, ignoring the danger it poses because she knows they have defenses and because this is a thousand times more important than any public complaint, Nono takes off, and takes Larc with her, blasting through the safety glass of the observation deck like it's not even there, away from the planet, away from everything - out, toward their home, toward the stars.