Charmaylarg Dufrain
🎖️ Game Master
- RP Date
- YE-46.3
- RP Location
- Black Sands Testing Range
A finished JP between @Charmaylarg Dufrain and @Rizzo
In the twilight hours of the night when darkness finally begins to ebb from the black of the void and stars to the still deep grays of a somwhere distant sun was the time of the insomniac and the early riser.
In the Star Army it was the latter, even if you were cursed with the former. In the dark even as it ebbed could froms be found as jobs changed from the closing of the third shift, the morning crews and workers, the crews hustling for morning duties, and finally those who could already be found stretching or likely already jogging in morning PT before the sun rose.
Suzume Itatski was one of the last group. Awake already and set In her PT shorts and classic 'If it aint tight it aint right' levels of form-fitting cotton T-shirt and well-worn running shoes was mid-stretch; Her body was currently shaped like a very impressive approximation of what a recurve bow might look like as the two arms were pulled closer to one another before setting the string arched her back more and more as her arms outstretched. Her body contorted slightly which only someone with a biological innate nature and control of their own center of gravity could accomplish before her hands finally touched the ground. One leg after the other then went into the air into a backward somersault that had her feet place back onto the ground as she exhaled and took in a deep followup breath.
Her face settled into its usual stoic deadpan as she surveyed the dark. Her olive skin complimented the still prevalent dark as the seasoned former ranger and medic took in the dull illumination of nearby buildings. She smashed an insect flat against her side and watched as a group of two joggers passed by, waiting until they were out of sight before starting her own run. She put one foot in front of the other, beginning what would be more than just a simple jog to start her first full day at the Black Sands; A welcoming change to the norm she had already decided as she put one foot in front of the other beginning her light jog with a measured pace, her footsteps steady and rhythmic against the gravel path. The cool morning air brushed against her skin, invigorating her senses as she moved, never slowing even between sets of overhead lights. Her breathing was controlled, each inhale and exhale synchronized with her strides. The silence of the early hour was punctuated only by the faint chirping of waking birds and the distant hum of machinery from the base. As she settled into her run, Suzume's mind cleared, focusing solely on the path ahead and the gentle cadence of her movements in the pre-dawn hours.
The path lead her to the silhouette of a man, a massive sword in hand. his warriors pose, Yoga-like as he drilled, body moving dance-like as he swung the massive odachi with inhuman grace. Her steps seemed to disturb his rhythm as she drew near. Stopping, he sheathed his blade and responded to her approach. "That's odd. You must be new here," he stated, the comment like a question that forgot to seek an answer, "new in town? I try not to practice around the typical personnel."
Suzume did not stop but merely slowed her pace, transitioning into a jog in place. Her feet moved rhythmically up and down in a high-knee style, her expression unreadable, like a mindless drone lost in thought that to the swordsman may have likely looked as though she were as uninterested as could be in him. For a very awkward thirty seconds, she continued this motion, her arms and legs pumping casually as she met the swordsman's gaze without even glancing at the weapon in some strange power play she didnt know she was partaking in as little remembered laws she had been subject to by association with her beloved elder sisters husband came to mind at her recollection.
Finally, she spoke, just as he appeared about to break the silence possibly. "This is a public thoroughfare," she intoned, her voice calm and almost admonishingly bored as if pointing out the obvious to someone unaware of it. Her breath remained steady, unaffected by the exertion.
She didn't know if the rules here, on base, were the same as on the Shiro; A space station. But regardless few people appreciated it when you turned the corner in the halls and someone was swinging a sword around.
And while this wasn't the halls of the Shiro, it was at least still dark out and despite every swordsman or swordswoman she met having some instinctual need to dance around with a blade often half naked in the moonlight to appease some base desire they could at least find better and less public spaces to do that before some Mini-neko came flying past at the wrong time and an incident report needed to be filed on the matter.
"Indeed, it is a public path... you know you're about 2 klicks from the base though. Most don't come out this far. I guess I'm just surprised," he replied cooly, "I take it you like to challenge yourself. Respectable. you don't happen to spar, do you? I have a recruit flying in today. I'm hoping to see how she fights myself but haven't had the time to practice."
A mental tally clicked over in a little part of Suzumes' mind at the words being almost verbatim what Father Jericho had once used upon meeting her, and the following lessons and rhetoric only for her to have suplexed him into a training mat shortly thereafter.
She wondered if she should write a book, or perhaps a primer with her concerningly growing list of encounters with random swordsmen over the years who accosted her on her travels and monologued or spouted rhetoric before wanting to fight her and how to deal with them. Had any part of her had her name printed on it she could at least attribute it to more dregs trying to make a show to garner her precious elder sisters' attention, or Setsuyas husband who was known as a more than competent swordsman himself.
When they failed, they tried the next best thing to get it. And that usually always ended up with them casually blocking Suzume's path thinking they could win over some second chance.
This was not that. But a young maiden could only encounter the same situation so many times before it became tedious.
A long, deep exhalation left her as she stopped jogging after simply staring at the man for so long as she shook out her wrists and damped some of the humidity off her brow as she looked her counterpart up and down.
Average build if a bit tall, Nepleslian or- Correction, Minkan, but with a more Nepleslian-looking face and inflection to his tone made the slightly larger than standard blade either a spur of the moment choice due to Nepleslian logic about size, or more likely a choice of a longer, heavier blade to compliment his size compared to one usually made size-spec for smaller Neko like base NH-33.
Making a descision, Suzume grunted and inclined her head ever so slightly in professional defference and then jerked a chin back up towards the man.
"Very well, what would you have in mind, Seinor?" She enunciated the last part, appraising that he was at least higher rank than her own meager rank and his mention of a subordinate making him at least at the lowest a non-com.
Initzio shrugged, "Apparently she favors a CQB approach to things. Kinda punches her way through fights. Not all that dissimilar to how I used to handle myself."
"Nhm." Suzume gave an appreciative nod, quite the pugilist herself. Her species were made to appreciate and utilize their bodies' natural bio-enhanced strength. Anyone could swing a sharp stick around, some even did so with clear finesse.
It took a real professional to be able to master their very own body as an extension of their will and weaponize it efficiently in a fight.
"I am the same." She acknowledged, back audibly popping as she pushed her shoulders back and her chest forwards and cocked her head to one side to do the same before tilting to the other. "Do you have a preferred location or?" She let the question hang, their current location at least nominally illuminated that neither of them would have to enhance their own vision in the still dark but slowly rising contrast of the pre-dawn.
"It may be hard to see but this little spot was a nice sparring ring at one time. The people who made it only used it a few times and the path you took was made just following the trail the soldiers had made coming to and from this spot. It's as good a place as any to train," he explained, tossing the sword aside, "come; Teach me something new." He took a gentle Wing Chun ready stance in the middle of a weedy circle, benches surrounding the ring.
Half expecting him to use his sword Suzume was a bit disappointed though it did not show on her face as she reached down and tightened the laces on her running shoes. Standing back up she did a couple of quick hops to loosen up, each one fractionally longer than she should have stayed off the ground as she hovered slightly.
Content, she strode the remaining distance, and could faintly see the outline he was talking about as she matched the opposite position from him. Wrists loose and still at her sides she didn't quite recognize his fighting style, favoring a more Nepleslian style of hybrid in-fighting and out-boxing. At least recognizing the purpose of her opponent's stance Suzume inhaled deeply and brought up both fists already clenched up at a level so her eyes were just looking over them, one fist slightly further from the other to favor her dominant right arm.
"Beni." She stated an introduction and a statement both. Having essentially already been invited to strike first, Suzume took up her new sparring partner's invitation and slid her front foot forward against the early morning condensation on the grass, pushing herself to just out of arms reach of either herself or Barone.
And then did the last thing her stance or stature implied and used the foot to pivot, hard, on the grass and bring her body into a three-quarter turn; Following it up by launching out a severe straight-kick with her other foot directly at his chest, the surprise kick connecting past his defenses and the sole of her shoe hitting right above the solar plexus though not with over much force, the experienced neko holding well back.
landing the blow she brought the raised leg back down to the ground instead of following through with another kick and worked it left and right into the ground, the very same slick condensation of the ground she had used for the attack allowing her to pivot faster than Barone had likely expected as she essentially 'slid' sideway on the ground to do it without telegraphing the attack.
"Point." She stated matter of factly. Not unwarranted that a 33A at their full strength with such an attack could have fractured or even broken an unarmored someone's bones with such a kick and almost certainly taken them out of the fight.
His reaction had been slow to block the unexpected kick, coughing a grunt as his ribs compressed, bruising setting in nearly instantly from the blow of the NH-33A. He froze in place as he wheezed, breath eventually returning to his lungs. "I suppose kicking wasn't off the menu," he admitted, "alright."
The man responded with a lightning-fast roundhouse kick, his gravitonics enhancing his natural strength and agility. A Neko could handle his superhuman kick, evenly matching the reduced power of the kick from the Neko that was easily a third stronger than he was. However, the kick thrown at her head proved to be a feint as he pulled back, seemingly switching feet as his other leg landed well below her guard sweeping her from beneath her quicker than she could realize his deception. "One hand lies while the other tells the truth," he quipped, retaking his ready stance.
A forearm raised to the side of her head to soften the fall, Suzume landed considerably lightly for the sweep as one hand pushed off the ground and floated back up to a standing position, her feet already in place as soon as she touched the ground, her nonplussed expression hiding hey annoyance even if her next statement, altogether physical, expressed it fully.
Without responding, without feints or fancy footwork Suzume slid forwards with her posture low in an infighting move, both hands curled into fists at her chest like an olive-skinned praying mantis as she closed directly into Barone's forward spacing with a low lunge and brought one fist forwards in a rapid jab directly for his guard and preparing a followup with the other.
Barone's guard held as his hand redirected the much stronger Neko's attacks, his body sidestepping her fists as he placed a leg behind hers and made his play to trip Suzume, his open palms suddenly gripping her arms and his inertial manipulation pushing her groundwards.
He noticed too late, however when one of Suzumes' hands clasped against his forearm and cinched tight, the other making a simple but effective twisting motion to release from his grasp as she arrested her backwards momentum with some subtle but effective alterations to her gravity turning a fall into a hover as she slid one foot back to flat on the ground and then pushed hard to push herself back up while yanking Barone down towards her; The entire action taking barely longer than a second as Suzume slid the hand that she had freed up Barones guard and hit his shoulder with her palm. But instead of following through with the force of the blow, she used the momentum to push him, turning the both of them mid-flight and then when she was on top following through until their positions were reversed and Suzume was standing over him, his back to the wet grass.
"Point." She stated with certainty, her chest rising and falling with some exertion as she extended a hand downwards in offering to him, the very first ebbs of gray touching the previously absolute dark of the night sky of the pre-dawn that threatened the eventual sunrise.
Barone lay motionless for a few painful seconds as he forced his lungs to accept air again. Breathlessly he coughed out, "I take it you're Suzume? I'm Barone." Taking her hand and being hauled to his feet he dusted off his dirty PT uniform. "Looks like I'm losing my edge."
"Hai." Suzume acknowledged, pulling him up to his feet before taking several steps and offering a polite drop of the head just short of a customary bow before introducing herself fully.
"I am Itatski Suzume, formerly of the 109th Imperial Ravens. Here at your request, Heisho." She intoned confidently before following up at Barones own statement after identifying him by context.
She lightly bit her tounge, the desire to list off her many achievements for some sort of recognition of a stranger. To be trained by the former samurai Jo Midori, her time on Terra multa learning conveniently under some of the Star Armys most competent veterans as well as her firsthand experience against the immortals and Kuvexians forging her into one of the most intimate of blunt objects in the entire empire all lingered on the tip of her tongue. That it was not any disgrace or fault of this man to not meet up to someone as specialized as she was in the art and intimacy of physicality and fighting.
But instead, she steeled her mind and recited the mantra in her mind that was the very thing that made up who and what she was as she shook her head at Barone's statement of his own worth.
'I alone am strong.
"It is not so, Heisho. Your skill and technique are not at fault. It was simply a combination of factors resulting in a poor matchup in my favor. You did better than most considering the advantages I have In my favor." For someone like her father to have named her second only to the Great Kessaku who he knew personally in her fighting prowess it was an inevitability that she would come out on top of any fight, even an impromptu sparring match.
Finding herself staring at her senior for an extended period as she did when she tended to zone out, a little thought wormed its way to her forethought as she cocked her head slightly at the man.
"Did you predict I would come through here?" She asked, rather impressed if so at his skill if so having not been on the base for even a full day to have made a habit so far to have been predicted and intercepted as such.
"Who knows?" a sly grin crossed his lips. "I once arranged an orbital collision over planet Osman a week before the other party arrived. Being a marksman requires patience, but boy did my shot pay off." His sword magically leapt from the ground to his hand, which he promptly began wielding as a walking stick to cope with the injuries common to sparring with Neko. He motioned for her to follow as he continued down the path. "My life is more like a series of lives. You may have heard of ST Data Fragmentation. It's terrible really. Well, we're looking to find it's origin and put an end to it. I won't lie, you've died a lot and that's why I want you. You're statistically less likely to experience permanent death from out psionic attacking enemies while keeping a massive Kill/Death ratio and able to serve our intelligence role. Just perfect."
"Osman... The place with the big hats?" Suzume asked quietly more to herself though only really thinking of the large 10-gallon hats she had seen in passing. Looking past that however, she drew what she could from the context he just dropped and stiffened.
"Soul Transfer data fragmentation is caused by a nominal corruption of the machine-brains compression; Slight power surges durring the recovery or data transmission upon setting a backup, rare errors in machine code caused by a variety of factors, or tampering with the NH-code not being corrected such as through telepathic interception and insertion of data packets." She rehersed nearly verbatim from a common stance on the subject before continuing with the rest of the arguement.
"The only beings capable of psionic-telepathic exploitation were the occhestians of the Lorath subspecies. And that was corrected in the onset of the NH-27. There are no species that yet remain with the ability to psionically alter the NH-series gene."
"All of that is theoretical, even more so what we're exploring. We have reason to believe this Fragmentation has more nefarious origins and the potential to be maliciously spread," he explained, "we cannot allow this to be ignored any longer. At one time it was one in a trillion that might have it. In the last fifteen years, it's more like one in a hundred billion. Tiny, I know, but the operative Candon Suites got taken out by this thing. We don't know all of the details, much of what we are doing is investigatory as of yet, but it's origins will be found eventually. In the meantime the NMX are dipping their toes back into the psionics pool. When not pursuing a fragmentation case, we will be hunting the most dangerous psionic wielders in the Kikyo sector."
"I see." She processed the information at hand, head cocked daintily off to one side in the way her sister often remarked as being 'cute'. "You're making a task force."
From there, however, her demeanor became slightly unreadable as she shook her head.
"There are others more qualified than myself. If you've read my file you would know Kyoko alone would have more to offer than a midline medic with a bellow-average survival record." She referred to her younger sister, Already an accomplished SAINT operative with a spotless record.
"Set' alone should have been your first pick." Her tone turned rather hard as she continued, not eluding to but wondering if this man or others had gone outside of the admirals protection to try to poach Setsuya during her recovery.
"I am the least of them. Why me?"
Barone stopped his pace and looked Suzume in the eyes. His silence is awkward as he lingered a few seconds, he would hardly be inclined to tell her that he needed a minute to think of how best to respond. His brain finally put the thoughts together as his poker face maintained it's facade,"Maybe you're expendable. Or maybe I like giving people opportunities to earn glory in battle. The reality is, SAINT has its hands full and often times the best operatives are only the best because they are given missions that they specialize in. We're charting waters unknown here. There's no way to know who is best suited for these assignments. We need people that can adapt on the fly AND we need to accomplish all of this without taking the specialized operatives off of their current assignments. That leaves people like us."
"I see." She didn't but weighed the situation the best she could. Her beloved elder sister was in the best hands they could be, and Kyoko and Sachiko had proven long ago that she was just holding them back. She acknowledged this years before which was the driving factor for her desire to re-enter active service and find her way.
It's why she had gone through all the training to be where she was standing today... This morning... Someone like Suzume Itatski could only sit on her haunches for so long holding onto some self-made excuse of her sister needing her when even she could tell she was stifling Setsuya.
She couldnt track down Midori. And had no clue where out there the Immortal was to take his offer. She was here now, with an opertunity before her practically made to compliment her skillset.
There was no grandiose statement of acknolwedgement. Instead she fell on her usual habbit of non sequitur as she offered a formal bow.
"Itatski Suzume." She greeted him formally. "Ranger of four years, 109th Imperial Ravens; Terra Multa. My favorite food is chocolate caramel parfait, my favorite anime is Solar Gunpowder Girls Plus; At your service, Heisho."
"Ugh, Rangers. I guess the pickings really are slim these days," he teased as he clapped a hand on her shoulder and continued on the path, "Let's get you a room. Black Sands actually has pretty spacious accommodations."
